Heavy Oil and Bottom of the Barrel Processing

Recently, resid upgrading processes have increased in importance as the average crude oil mix to refineries continues to become heavier. In addition, the volume of the upgrading of extra heavy oils and bitumens in Venezuela and Alberta, Canada to pipelineable and/or synthetic crude oils continues to rapidly expand. This session includes reviews of current resid upgrading technologies: coking (delayed coking, Fluid coking, and Flexicoking), hydroconversion (LC-Fining and H-Oil), and resid catalytic cracking. In addition, each of these resid upgrading processes has large potential for improvement over current practice. As a result, this session also includes discussions of research results that point the way to obtaining significant improvements in resid conversion.