(44c) Optimization of Solvent Deasphalting Process to Produce Deasphalted Oil for Partial Upgrading of Heavy Oil with Visbreaking

The solvent deasphalting(SDA) process is a partial upgrading process that separates asphaltene to obtain deasphalted oil(DAO) from heavy oil such as bitumen in oil sand. Maximize the yield of DAO from the heavy oil and produce the product that meets the condition of the pipeline transportation, the experimental study of SDA process and configuration with visbreaking process was investigated in this work. This study was conducted in a bench-scale SDA process which consists of feed and solvent supply, extraction column, pitch collection and solvent separation with recovery. The experiment was carried out using effective parameters such as temperatures, pressure, solvent to oil(S/O) ratio and types of solvents. All experimental conditions were adjusted to reduce viscosity and density without consideration of substances such as metals, sulfur and carbon conradson residue in order to satisfy pipeline transport specifications. The result show that removal efficiency of asphaltene increase when using a solvent with a high carbon content. The density and viscosity of DAO was approached to meet pipeline transport specifications. However, the simple combination of the SDA process and visbreaking process still not met the requirement for pipeline transportation. Thus, optimized the operating state of the SDA process with configuration with the vesbreaking process was suggested in this study.