(130e) Hydrocracking for Clean Fuels Production

Suheil F. Abdo Vasant Thakkar Bart Dziabala

UOP, LLC Des Plaines, Illinois, USA

Abstract

Hydrotreating and hydrocracking are two of the best suited upgrading technologies to help meet the increasingly challenging clean and reformulated fuels challenge. The wide variety of hydrocracking catalyst and process schemes currently available offers a fair degree of leverage which can be utilized to meet the challenge. The most effective approach to meet the clean fuels challenge will greatly benefit from enhanced knowledge of the chemistry taking place in under varied process conditions. However, due to the very complex nature of typical feed stocks and the simpler but still complex product composition, detailed assessment and control of the required molecular transformations has eluded technologists in the field.

New developments will require increasingly specific tailoring of new catalysts to optimize the desired reaction pathways which vary with process design and the consequent environment the catalyst must operate in. Development efforts to meet clean fuels production objectives must start by establishing a detailed knowledge of the required molecular transformations and then coupling this knowledge with catalyst design principles and process conditions. This presentation will illustrate the benefits achieved through application of new tools for detailed catalyst and hydrocarbon characterization can help in enhancing the reaction pathways in the hydrocracking unit to achieve these goals. Examples of catalyst and process schemes offered for the upgeading of cycle oils into a mix of clean, high-value gasoline and diesel products under hydrocracking conditions will be presented to illustrate these principles.