Study and modeling of simultaneous hydrodesulfurization, hydrodenitrogenation and hydrodearomatization on vacuum gas oil hydrotreatment

摘要

One of the objectives of the present work is to expose the use of a trickle bed reactor model to predict the quality of products during the hydrotreatment of vacuum gas oil using a commercial catalyst and based on data obtained at pilot-plant scale, where catalytic experiments were carried out under typical industrial considerations, at different temperatures, pressures, and space-velocity (LSHV). Most of the models only consider the hydrodesulfurization reaction (HDS). However, models that involve hydrogenation of aromatics (HDA) and hydrodenitrogenation (HDN) are scarce in the literature, and they are also very important for hydrotreatment reactor modeling, because mainly to news maximum limits in aromatics and nitrogen. A sequential design of experiments was used for model discrimination and parameter estimation during kinetic investigation. Also, was investigated the effect of aromatics molecules (naphthalene, phenantrene) and nitrogen containing compounds (carbazol, acridine) on the HDS of a vacuum gas oil (VGO). The reactor was simulated with a steady-state one-dimensional heterogeneous model. In addition, all necessary thermophysical properties, such as phase densities, viscosities, conductivities, diffusivities, and molar partial enthalpies were continuously calculated as functions of the system pressure, temperature and phase composition.