(630i) Hydrotreating of Petroleum Vacuum Residue In Supercritical Aromatic Solvents with Activated Carbons

Hydrotreating
of Petroleum Vacuum Residue in
Supercritical Aromatic
Solvents with Activated Carbons

Tran Tan Viet¹,
Jae-Hyuk Lee¹, Il Yong Jeong²,
Jae Wook Ryu² and Chang-Ha Lee¹*

¹Department
of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea

²Global
Technology, SK Innovation, Daejun, Korea

TEL :
+82-2-2123-2762,  FAX:
+82-2-312-6401 , e-mail : leech@yonsei.ac.kr

Petroleum vacuum residue (VR) is
the heaviest fraction of refine petroleum processes, which contains higher
portions of asphaltene and higher concentration of
contaminants such as sulfur, nitrogen, and heavy metals. Conversion of VR into
light fraction without heteroatoms becomes important more and more in the refinery
because of the short supply of light sweet crude oil as well as the steep increase
of crude oil price.

In the study, the hydrotreating of VR in supercritical hydrocarbon solvents was
conducted with activated carbon (AC) as a catalyst in batch reactor. Two kinds of
supercritical hydrocarbon solvents were applied: n-alkanes (n-hexane and n-dodecane) and aromatic solvents (toluene and m-xylene).

Along with the conversion level and
coke formation of hydrotreating VR reaction, the
distribution of oil product (naphtha, middle distillate, vacuum gas oil and
residue) in each supercritical hydrocarbon solvent was evaluated. The
supercritical aromatic solvent gave much smaller naphtha fraction but higher
middle distillate fraction than the supercritical n-alkanes did. It implies
that the conversion level and product quality can be controlled by the selected
supercritical solvent. In addition, the effect of hydrogen partial pressure and
surface properties of AC on the hydrotreating VR
reaction were also investigated.

Keyword:
hydrotreating, vacuum residue, supercritical
hydrocarbon solvent, activated carbon