The worldwide energy management nowadays demands a more sophisticated utilization of the existing energy sources. The refineries are significantly affected by these energy saving policies requiring improvement/modification of existing or development of new/alternative refining processes. One solution is to upgrade more and more of heavier or residual fractions into lighter desirable distillates via catalytic cracking. However, the residual cracking poses numerous problems for the oil companies and the catalyst manufacturers. The increasing portion of larger molecules/compounds containing heteroatoms and metal contaminants in fractions of increasing boiling point mainly accounts for the difficulties in processing heavy oils. Thus, problems associated with decreased catalyst stability, activity and selectivity are becoming more often and more serious during processing residual FCC feeds, demanding new FCC catalyst technologies [1]. A more detailed knowledge of the deactivation mechanisms could significantly facilitate manufacturing of improved, metal-tolerant FCC catalysts. Moreover, a most realistic and accurate laboratory procedure for the evaluation of such improved FCC catalysts is essential. As a result, one of the biggest challenges in FCC research field is to first simulate how the FCC catalyst is deactivated in a commercial FCC unit and then evaluate its performance in lab-scale testing [2]. The scope of the present study is to investigate the effects of the deposited metals and their oxidation state during laboratory deactivation on the final properties of the deactivated samples.
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