Hydrocracking Deasphalted Oil from an Atmospheric Residuum

Abstract

Atmospheric residue obtained from Gulf of Suez mix crude oils has been deasphalted using ethylacetate as a deasphalting agent to reduce the asphaltene content. The solvent was succeeded to reduce the asphaltenic constituents and improved the quality of the deasphalted oil as CCR, nitrogen, heavy metals, and sulfur contents. The reduction of these constituents were 18, 40, 78, and 64%, respectively. The improved DAO was hydrocracked in order to optimize middle distillate prodcution with minimum gas formation under hydrocracking conditions in a fixed bed micro-cata test unit by using an commercial presulfided Co-Mo-Ni/Al catalyst. The conversion to gas, gasoline, and middle distillate was found to increase with increase in reaction temperature and decrease in LHSV. The highest conversion of 87.15% was obtained at 475°C and with 0.5 h⁻¹ LHSV, and reaction pressure of 60 bar.

Keywords:

• conversion
• deasphalted oils
• heavy residue
• hydrocracking
• middle distillate