Search

Four straight run vacuum residual oils (SRVRO) and five H-Oil hydrocracked vacuum residual oils (H-Oil VTB) and their blends were oxidized in a laboratory autoclave reactor. It was found that the a...

The performance of both ebullated bed H-Oil vacuum residue (VR) hydrocracking and fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) of vacuum gas oils (VGO) is interrelated. The increase of H-Oil unit reaction temper...

This study highlights the importance of the condition of the catalytic system in the ebullated bed vacuum residue hydrocracker on the performance of the unit, proving that not only feedstock qualit...

The gasoline blending prediction models available in the open literature: Linear method, Ethyl method, Stewart method, Zahed method, and Twu method were tested on 25 gasoline blends prepared from 14 components used by LUKOIL Neftohim Burgas (LNB) refinery to produce commercial gasoline grades. The performed tests with these models showed prediction accuracy outside of the acceptable ASTM D 2699 and ASTM D 2700 reproducibility limits. However, the LNB-modified regression model of Zahed method turned out to predict RON and MON of studied gasoline blends with accuracy equivalent to the reproducibility of the standard methods for measurement of RON and MON.

H-Oil vacuum gas oils obtained during hydrocracking of vacuum residual oils originated from the crudes Russian Export Blend, Basrah light, and Heavy Kazakh were cracked in a mixture with a hydrotreated vacuum gas oil in the LUKOIL Neftohim Burgas commercial fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) unit. Some of the H-Oil vacuum gas oils were also cracked in a laboratory FCC (ACE) unit. The results from the commercial and the laboratory tests showed that the laboratory FCC experiments in an ACE unit can be used to evaluate the effect of feed quality on the commercial FCC unit performance. The assumption that the conversion of a vacuum gas oil (VGO) blend in the fluid catalytic cracking could be considered as a linear combination of the conversion of the individual components made by other researchers was also confirmed in this study. The higher the hydrogen content in the vacuum residual oil of a crude is the higher the FCC conversion of the H-Oil VGO, obtained during hydrocracking of that high saturate vacuum residual oil, will be expected.

Data from assays of 244 crude oils (condensates, extra light, light, intermediate, and heavy crudes) were processed by the InterCriteria Analysis with the aim to investigate the relationships between bulk properties and fraction properties of the crude oils and the degree of similarity between them. It was found that except the crude bulk properties sulfur, Conradson carbon, and metals content all other studied crude bulk properties exhibited lack of statistically meaningful relations or presence of weak statistically meaningful relations with the crude fraction properties. The use of the InterCriteria Analysis showed that crudes with very similar properties could be identified when a large crude database is available. In this way based on a previous experience in oil refining a selection of potentially beneficial new crudes for processing in a refinery could be made.

Five empirical methods toestimate the content of aromatic, naphthenic, and paraffinic carbon and hydrogen content and the bulk properties were tested for prediction of aromatic structures content of 95 vacuum gas oils. The density demonstrated the highest correlation with the aromatic structures content among all other studied bulk properties and empirical parameters. The aromatic structures content could be predicted by a second order power law dependence on density with accuracy commensurable with the reproducibility of SARA analysis. The poly-nuclear aromatic structures content was also found to depend on the density and can be expressed by a linear function.

A rapid and simple method for the determination of benzene and oxygenates in petroleum by heart-cutting gas chromatography is reported. Experimental design was used to optimize the chromatographic resolution with a short analysis time by improving the injection volume, split ratio, oven temperature, and oven ramps, with seven Deans’ switching heart-cutting applications. The analyses were performed by internal standardization and seven oxygenates and benzene were determined within 20 min. The calibration curves were linear across the tested ranges. The developed method was validated; the precision and accuracy were lower than 2.0 and 2.8%, respectively. The uncertainty was between ±0.012 and ±0.04%.