(103e) Light Cycle Oil Hydrotreating with Catalysts Containing W, Ni, Treated Zeolite, and Alumina

HDS activity for the production of ultra-clean diesel fuel can be enhanced by the introduction of acidic components to the hydrotreating catalysts. Zeolite Y is one of the most extensively studied acidic components due to its large pore size, high acidity, and good thermal and hydrothermal stability. However, efforts have mainly focused on hydrothermally treated zeolite Y. Few reports were concerned with chemical approaches to treat zeolite Y. Zeolite beta has similar pore structure, thermal and hydrothermal stability with zeolite Y, but present higher acidity and isomerization activity. Therefore, zeolite beta is also a great candidate for hydrotreating catalyst. So far, less studies were on the hydrotreating of real LCO with modified beta, especially zeolite beta plus zeolite Y. In this work, zeolite Y was treated by the chemical approach using (NH4)2SiF6 aqueous solution. Zeolite beta was prepared by hydrothermally treating NH4-Beta, followed by the acid leaching. The series of WNi/Y, WNi/Beta, and WNi/Y-Beta catalysts were made using the treated zeolite Y, zeolite beta, and treated Y and Beta as the acidic components respectively. The catalysts were characterized by BET, TEM, XPS, XRD, NH4-TPD. The performance of the catalysts was evaluated in a stirred autoclave using light cycled oil (LCO) as feed. WNi/Y and WNi/Y-Beta catalysts showed similar hydrodenitrogenation (HDN) and hydrocracking activities, a higher HDN activity than WNi/Beta. For hydrodesulfurization (HDS), WNi/Beta and WNi/Y-Beta catalysts have similar activity, but higher than that of WNi/Y. The activity order for the hydrodearomatics was WNi/Y-Beta> WNi/Beta>WNi/Y. WNi/Beta presented the lowest hydrocracking activity. A variety of techniques were used to characterize the catalysts and the structure/morphology of catalysts was correlated with the performance of the catalysts.