Dewaxing Process by Bechtel Corp
Application: Bechtel’s Dewaxing process is used to remove waxy components from lubrication base-oil streams to simultaneously meet desired low-temperature properties for dewaxed oils and produce slack wax as a byproduct.
Description: Waxy feedstock (raffinate, distillate or deasphalted oil) is mixed with a binary-solvent system and chilled in a very closely controlled manner in scraped-surface double-pipe exchangers (1) and refrigerated chillers (2) to form a wax/oil/solvent slurry.
The slurry is filtered through the primary filter stage (3) and dewaxed oil mixture is routed to the dewaxed oil recovery section (5) to separate solvent from oil. Prior to solvent recovery, the primary filtrate is used to cool the feed/solvent mixture (1). Wax from the primary stage is slurried with cold solvent and filtered again in the repulp filter (4) to reduce the oil content to approximately 10%.
The repulp filtrate is reused as dilution solvent in the feed chilling train. The wax mixture is routed to a solvent-recovery section (6) to remove solvent from the product streams (hard wax and soft wax). The recovered solvent is collected, dried (7) and recycled back to the chilling and filtration sections.
Licensor: Bechtel Corp.
Catalytic Dewaxing Process by ExxonMobil
Application: Use ExxonMobil’s Research & Engineering’s (EMRE’s) Selective Catalytic Dewaxing (MSDW) process to make high VI lube base stock.
Products: High VI / low-aromatics lube base oils (light neutral through bright stocks). Byproducts include fuel gas, naphtha and low-pour diesel.
Description: ExxonMobil’s Research & Engineering’s (EMRE’s) MSDW is targeted for hydrocracked or severely hydrotreated stocks. The improved selectivity of MSDW for the highly isoparaffinic-lube components results in higher lube yields and VIs. The process uses multiple catalyst systems with multiple reactors. Internals are proprietary (the Spider Vortex Quench Zone technology is used). Feed and recycle gases are preheated and contact the catalyst in a down-flow-fixed-bed reactor.
Reactor effluent is cooled, and the remaining aromatics are saturated in a post-treat reactor. The process can be integrated into a lube hydrocracker or lube hydrotreater. Post-fractionation is targeted for client needs.
Operating conditions:
Temperatures, ° F 550 – 800
Hydrogen partial pressures, psig 500 – 2,500
LHSV 0.4 – 3.0
Conversion depends on feed wax content
Pour point reduction as needed.
Licensor: ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Co.
Visbreaking Process by Shell
Application: The Shell Soaker Visbreaking process is most suitable to reduce the viscosity of vacuum (and atmospheric) residues in (semi) complex refineries. The products are primarily distillates and stable fuel oil. The total fuel oil production is reduced by decreasing the quantity of cutter stock required. Optionally, a Shell vacuum flasher may be installed to recover additional gas oil and waxy distillates as cat cracker or hydrocracker feed from the cracked residue. The Shell Soaker Visbreaking technology has also proven to be a very cost-effective revamp option for existing units.
Description: The preheated vacuum residue is charged to the visbreaker heater (1) and from there to the soaker (2). The conversion takes place in both the heater and the soaker. The operating temperature and pressure are controlled such as to reach the desired conversion level and/or unit capacity. The cracked feed is then charged to an atmospheric fractionator (3) to produce the desired products like gas, LPG, naphtha, kerosine, gas oil, waxy distillates and cracked residue. If a vacuum flasher is installed, additional gas oil and waxy distillates are recovered from the cracked residue.
Yields: Vary with feed type and product specifications.
Feed, vacuum residue Middle East
Viscosity, cSt @100°C 615
Products, wt%
Gas 2.2
Gasoline, 165°C EP 4.8
Gas oil, 350°C EP 13.6
Waxy distillate, 520°C EP 23.4
Residue, 520°C+ 56
Licensor: Shell Global Solutions International B.V. and ABB Lummus Global B.V.
Visbreaking Process by Foster Wheeler
Application: Manufacture incremental gas and distillate products and simultaneously reduce fuel oil viscosity and pour point. Also, reduce the amount of cutter stock required to dilute the resid to meet the fuel oil specifications. Foster Wheeler/UOP offer both “coil” and “soaker” type visbreaking processes. The following information pertains to the “coil” process.
Products: Gas, naphtha, gas oil, visbroken resid (tar).
Description: In a “coil” type operation, charge is fed to the visbreaker heater (1) where it is heated to a high temperature, causing partial vaporization and mild cracking. The heater outlet stream is quenched with gas oil or fractionator bottoms to stop the cracking reaction. The vapor-liquid mixture enters the fractionator (2) to be separated into gas, naphtha, gas oil and visbroken resid (tar). The tar may also be vacuum flashed for recovery of visbroken vacuum gas oil.
Operating conditions: Typical ranges are:
Heater outlet temperature, ºF 850 – 910
Quenched temperature, ºF 710 – 800
An increase in heater outlet temperature will result in an increase in overall severity, further viscosity reduction and an increase in conversion.
Yields:
Feed, source Light Arabian Light Arabian
Type Atm. Resid Vac. Resid
Gravity, ºAPI 15.9 7.1
Sulfur, wt% 3.0 4.0
Concarbon, wt% 8.5 20.3
Viscosity, CKS @130ºF 150 30,000
CKS @ 210ºF 25 900
Products, wt%
Gas 3.1 2.4
Naphtha (C5 – 330 ºF) 7.9 6.0
Gas oil 14.5 15.5
Visbroken resid 74.5 (600ºF+) 76.1 (662ºF+)
Licensor: Foster Wheeler USA Corp./UOP.
Thermal Gasoil Process by Shell
Application: The Shell Thermal Gasoil process is a combined residue and waxy distillate conversion unit. The process is an attractive low-cost conversion option for hydroskimming refineries in gasoil-driven markets or for complex refineries with constrained waxy distillate conversion capacity. The typical feedstock is atmospheric residue, which eliminates the need for an upstream vacuum flasher. This process features Shell Soaker Visbreaking technology for residue conversion and an integrated recycle heater system for the conversion of waxy distillate.
Description: The preheated atmospheric (or vacuum) residue is charged to the visbreaker heater (1) and from there to the soaker (2). The conversion takes place in both the heater and soaker and is controlled by the operating temperature and pressure. The soaker effluent is routed to a cyclone (3). The cyclone overheads are charged to an atmospheric fractionator (4) to produce the desired products including a light waxy distillate. The cyclone and fractionator bottoms are routed to a vacuum flasher (6), where waxy distillate is recovered. The combined waxy distillates are fully converted in the distillate heater (5) at elevated pressure.
Yields: Depend on feed type and product specifications.
Feed atmospheric residue Middle East
Viscosity, cSt @ 100°C 31
Products, % wt.
Gas 6.4
Gasoline, ECP 165°C 12.9
Gasoil, ECP 350°C 38.6
Residue, ECP 520°C+ 42.1
Utilities, typical consumption/production for a 25,000-bpd unit,
dependent on configuration and a site’s marginal economic values for
steam and fuel:
Fuel as fuel oil equivalent, bpd 675
Power, MW 1.7
Net steam production (18 bar), tpd 370
Licensor: Shell Global Solutions International B.V., and ABB Lummus Global B.V.
Hydroprocessing Heavy Oil and Residue Process by
Application: Conversion of heavy petroleum residues or crude oil into lighter and higher value materials.
Products: Low-sulfur content naphtha, diesel and gasoil
Description: The Genoil Upgrader consists of the proprietary Genoil hydroconversion unit (GHU) and an integrated gasification and combined cycle (IGCC) section. By integrating with gasification and balancing pitch conversion with hydrogen and utility demands, the GHU and the overall upgrader becomes a truly bottomless, self-sufficient facility that is suitable to be added into an existing refining complex or as a merchant upgrader near a remote oil field.
Based on a fixed-bed hydrogenation technology and using special mixing devices to ensure full catalysts utilization and higher efficiency, the GHU converts the heavy petroleum feed into lighter products such as naphtha, diesel and low-sulfur gasoil that can be used as fuel-oil blend or FCCU feed. The unconverted portion will be removed as vacuum residue (VR) and fed to the IGCC units. In comparison to the traditional residue treating processes such as visbreaking and delayed coking, the GHU offers a significantly higher conversion to valuable petroleum products. The IGCC will use partial oxidation and gasification technologies to convert the VR into hydrogen, fuel gas and power. The hydrogen will be recovered and fed to the GHU to support the hydrogenation reactions, whereas fuel gas, steam and power are used to run the overall Genoil upgrader.
Process: In general, the Genoil upgrader consists of these processing units (see diagram):
• Genoil hydroconversion unit (GHU)
• Syngas unit (SGU)
• Air separation unit (ASU)
• Acid-gas removal unit (AGR)
• Hydrogen recovery unit (HRU)
• Combined-cycle unit (CCU.)
The GHU is similar to normal hydrotreating units consisting sections such as: feed preparation and preheat, reactions, effluent cooling and separation, gas recycle and product fractionation. The reactor section consists of a series of four reactor beds: guard, hydrodemetalization (HDM), hydrodesulfurization (HDS) and hydrodenitrogenation (HDN).
The syngas unit converts the VR under a partial oxidation processing condition in the gasifier to produce syngas, which is a mixture of H2, CO and CO2. The sulfur and nitrogen content in the residue will be converted to H2S, NH3 and HCN. After purification and cooling, the syngas will be sent to the AGR unit.
The ASU uses refrigeration and distillation to separate oxygen from ambient air. The oxygen product stream consisting over 95% oxygen is fed to the gasifier in the SGU as combustion air.
The AGR performs these operations: Remove the H2S from the syngas, GHU offgas and sour condensate using MDEA absorption technology; Convert CO into more H2 using high temperature shift and remove CO2 from sweetened gas using DGA absorption technology.
The HRU recovers H2 using pressure swing adsorption (PSA) technology. The sulfur recovery unit (SRU) uses a three-stage Claus Unit followed by an amine tail gas recovery plant to recover over 99.5% of the sulfur in the AGR offgas.
The CCU consists of gas turbine generator (GTG), heat-recovery steam generator (HRSG). Part of the steam produced will be used in the Upgrader and the reminder is sent to a steam turbine generator (STG) to produce more electrical power.
Performance: 85+% HDS, 50+%HDN, 8 –12 API increase, 50% pitch conversion (to balance conversion and utilities requirement)
Yields: Product yields depend on the quality of feed. For a typical AR feed, the liquid yields are: 3% Naphtha, 26% Diesel and 57% Gasoil, all based on the mass of crude feed.
Licensor: Genoil Inc.
Heavy Oil Upgrading Process by KBR
Application: Process designed for upgrading heavy oils including the Athabasca bitumen into a easily transportable synthetic crude oil.
Description: This process uses various proven and established refining technologies.
Bitumen with diluent is brought to the upgrader. The diluent is recovered in the diluent recovery unit (DRU) and returned to the production site. The bottom of the DRU is sent to a high deasphalted oil lift ROSE solvent deasphalting unit. The DAO is then sent to a special purpose Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit (FCCU). The FCCU operates at low conversion, normally between 30% and 60% and uses low cost low activity catalyst.
The metals in DAO are rejected with the spent catalyst. The carbon (CCR) is burnt in regenerator to produce steam. The FCCU products can be blended into synthetic crude oil. Alternately the products can be hydrotreated to produce low-sulfur synthetic crude oil. Steam produced in the FCCU is used within the complex. The asphaltenes from ROSE unit can be pelletized using KBR’s AQUAFORM pelletizing technology for ease of transportation to end users. Alternately the asphaltenes can be gasified to produce hydrogen, steam and power for bitumen production and upgrading.
Applications: This scheme can be used for upgrading of bitumen and other heavy and very heavy oils.
KBR has performed extensive pilot plant testing to confirm the viability of the scheme. Given below are pilot test results for KBR’s ROSE portion of the scheme.
ROSE pilot results:
Feed: Athabasca Bitumen
Feed Solvents DAO yield, vol.% CCR in DAO, wt.%
Full nC4 to C6 70–82 7–10
ATB C3 to nC5 40–87 1–9
VTB iC4 to nC5 17–65 5–14
The synthetic crude oil of following composition can be produced by the above scheme:
C5-350°F: 15–30 vol.%
Distillate: 40–65 vol.%
Gas oil: 20–30 vol.%
Licensor: KBR.
Emulsion Residue Upgrade Process by Akzo Nobel
Application: The Akzo Nobel/Quadrise emulsion residue enhancement process converts highly viscous, low-value, uncut residues from vacuum unit operations to an emulsion fuel for onward sale to third parties. Refiners benefit from term contract offtake of residue and release of HFO cutter-stock back to the refinery, for higher value realization. Quadrise typically purchases the residue at a price higher than its intrinsic value, and assume responsibility for the emulsion fuel sales.
Enhancements include moving to deeper vacuum unit cuts and increasing visbreaker severity or visbreaker vacuum flasher recovery to increase yields of lighter products. Enhancements are achieved without the normal penalty of increased cutter-stock addition to the resulting heavier residues. A combination of modifying process conditions and processing heavier, cheaper, crude oils leads to significantly lower quality residues in terms of density, CCR and viscosity. The technology handles these low-quality residues and produces a transportable emulsion fuel with a viscosity of 200 –1,000cSt at 50°C.
Description: Residues from a vacuum unit, visbreaker, visbreaker vacuum flasher or solvent de-asphalter (1) are taken from the refiners run-down system after process heat has been extracted, but prior to cutter stock addition. The residue stream is processed to a 70:30 oil-in-water emulsion in a proprietary skid-mounted package (2) supplied by Quadrise under license from Akzo Nobel. Various commercial options are available including licence; BOO/BOOT by Quadrise or JV with refiner.
Operating conditions: The residue temperature is adjusted to give a viscosity of around 300cSt for supply to the emulsification process. The maximum supply temperatures are 190°C (standard unit) and 260°C (high-temperature unit). The emulsion fuel run-down temperature to conventional HFO storage tanks is less than 65°C.
Residue viscosities of up to 100,000cSt (standard unit) and 60,000,000cSt (high-temperature unit) measured at 100°C can be handled, without impacting the quality of the emulsion fuel. The standard unit operates at less than 10 bars.
Licensor: Akzo Nobel through Quadrise Fuels International.
Deep Thermal Conversion Process by Shell
Application: The Shell Deep Thermal Conversion process closes the gap between visbreaking and coking. The process yields a maximum of distillates by applying deep thermal conversion of the vacuum residue feed and by vacuum flashing the cracked residue. High-distillate yields are obtained, while still producing a stable liquid residual product, referred to as liquid coke. The liquid coke, not suitable for blending to commercial fuel, is used for speciality products, gasification and/or combustion, e.g., to generate power and/or hydrogen.
Description: The preheated short residue is charged to the heater (1) and from there to the soaker (2), where the deep conversion takes place. The conversion is maximized by controlling the operating temperature and pressure. The soaker effluent is routed to a cyclone (3). The cyclone overheads are charged to an atmospheric fractionator (4) to produce the desired products like gas, LPG, naphtha, kero and gasoil. The cyclone and fractionator bottoms are subsequently routed to a vacuum flasher 5), which recovers additional gasoil and waxy distillate. The residual liquid coke is routed for further processing depending on the outlet.
Yields: Depend on feed type and product specifications.
Feed, vacuum residue Middle East
Viscosity, cSt @100°C 615
Products in % wt. on feed
Gas 3.8
Gasoline, ECP 165°C 8.2
Gas oil, ECP 350°C 19
Waxy distillate, ECP 520°C 22.8
Residue ECP 520°C+ 46.2
Economics: The typical investment for a 25,000-bpd unit will be about $1,900 to $2,300/bbl installed, excluding treating facilities. (Basis: Western Europe, 2004.).
Utilities, typical consumption/production for a 25,000-bpd unit,
dependent on configuration and a site’s marginal econmic values for
steam and fuel:
Fuel as fuel oil equivalent, bpd 417
Power, MW 1.2
Net steam production (18 bar), tpd 370
Licensor: Shell Global Solutions International B.V. and ABB Lummus Global B.V.
Wet Scrubbing System EDV Process by Belco
Application: EDV Technology is a low pressure drop scrubbing system, to scrub particulate matter (including PM2.5), SO2 and SO3 from flue gases. It is especially well suited where the application requires high reliability, flexibility and the ability to operate for 4 – 7 years continuously without maintenance shutdowns. The EDV technology is highly suited for FCCU regenerator flue-gas applications.
Products: The effluents from the process will vary based on the reagent selected for use with the scrubber. In the case where a sodiumbased reagent is used, the product will be a solution of sodium salts. Similarly, a magnesium-based reagent will result in magnesium salts. A lime/limestone-based system will produce a gypsum waste. The EDV technology can also be used with the LABSORB buffer thus making the system regenerative. The product, in that case, would be a usable condensed SO 2 stream.
Description: The flue gas enters the spray tower through the quench section where it is immediately quenched to saturation temperature. It proceeds to the absorber section for particulate and SO2 reduction. The spray tower is an open tower with multiple levels of BELCO-GNozzles. These nonplugging and abrasion-resistant nozzles remove particulates by impacting on the water/reagent curtains. At the same time, these curtains also reduce SO 2 and SO 3 emissions. The BELCOG-Nozzles are designed not to produce mist; thus a conventional mist eliminator is not required.
Upon leaving the absorber section, the saturated gases are directed to the EDV filtering modules to remove the fine particulates and additional SO3. The filtering module is designed to cause condensation of the saturated gas onto the fine particles and onto the acid mist, thus allowing it to be collected by the BELCO-F-Nozzle located at the top.
To ensure droplet-free stack, the flue gas enters a droplet separator. This is an open design that contains fixed-spin vanes that induce a cyclonic flow of the gas. As the gases spiral down the droplet separator, the centrifugal forces drive any free droplets to the wall, separating them from the gas stream.
Economics: The EDV wet scrubbing system has been extremely successful in the incineration and refining industries due to the very high scrubbing capabilities, very reliable operation and reasonable price.
Licensor: Belco Technologies Corp.