(108e) Hydrotreating and Catalytic Cracking of Bitumen-Derived Vacuum and Heavy Coker Gas Oils

Many North American refiners are
looking to the Canadian oil sands as a plentiful hydrocarbon resource in the
face of dwindling supplies of conventional crude oils.  However, the oil sands
bitumen presents a number of challenges, even after it has been diluted to
mimic traditional crudes for transport from Alberta to the United States.  As bitumen-derived crude oils become a larger portion of the refinery
feedstock slate, more vacuum gas oil and heavy coker gas oil will be fed to the
catalytic cracker to convert these heavy fractions to gasoline and
distillate-range materials.  Gas oil hydrotreating may be required in order to
obtain suitable cat cracker conversions and yields.  This paper will describe
the results of pilot-scale hydrotreating and cat cracking studies conducted on
straight-run vacuum and heavy coker gas oils isolated from Canadian
bitumen-derived crude oils.