Commercial Ebullated Bed Vacuum Residue Hydrocracking Performance Improvement during Processing Difficult Feeds

Abstract

The Urals and Siberian vacuum residues are considered difficult to process in the ebullated bed hydrocracking because of their increased tendency to form sediments. Their achievable conversion rate reported in the literature is 60%. Intercriteria analysis was used to assess data from a commercial vacuum residue hydrocracker during processing blends from three vacuum residues: Urals, Siberian Light, and Basra Heavy. The analysis revealed that the main contributors to conversion enhancement is hydrodemetallization (HDM) and the first reactor ΔT augmentation. The increase of HDM from 40 to 98% and the first reactor ΔT (ΔT(R1)) from 49 to 91 °C were associated with a vacuum residue conversion enhancement of 62.0 to 82.7 wt.%. The developed nonlinear regression prediction of conversion from HDM and ΔT(R1) suggests a bigger influence of ΔT(R1) enhancement on conversion augmentation than the HDM increase. The intercriteria analysis evaluation revealed that the higher first reactor ΔT suppresses the sediment formation rate to a greater extent than the higher HDM. During processing Basrah Heavy vacuum residue, a reduction in hydrodeasphaltization (HDAs) from 73.6 to 55.2% and HDM from 88 to 81% was observed. It was confirmed that HDM and HDAs are interrelated. It was found that the attainment of conversion of 80 wt.% and higher during processing Urals and Siberian Light vacuum residues is possible when the HDM is about 90% and LHSV ≤ 0.19 h−1.