S-Brane? Technology Brings Flexibility To Refiners’ Clean Fuel Solutions

摘要

Refiners worldwide are rushing to develop their strategy for economically and reliably meeting clean fuel regulation. Many of the North American Refiners need to meet the average 30 ppm and 300 ppm sulfur cap requirements on gasoline by the end of 2004. Although a large number of refiners have already chosen a primary strategy for sulfur reduction, there are still many refiners who are finding ways to postpone the decisions through sulfur credits, utilizing sulfur reduction catalysts etc. Others have the luxury of being in small refinery or hardship status with even more time to evaluate emerging technologies and options. Even refiners who have already made their decisions are continuously reevaluating their strategy as the market situation changes or each refinery’s financial situation changes. In addition, most refineries outside Europe and North America still have the luxury of waiting a little longer to make their eventual investment since their clean fuel regulations are somewhat lagging behind. Whatever the chosen solution for a refiner, it first has to meet all the technical requirements of the refiners. In addition to the technical requirements, however, business and operational concerns often dictate the decision making process. Issues include low capital investment for compliance, flexibility in implementation, and adaptability for future regulation change. Capital investment is very tight and many refineries view the investment for sulfur reduction for meeting regulations and not for revenue and profit generation. As a result, capital avoidance and capital spending delay are common. In general, there are two classes of technologies for refiner’s clean fuel solutions: standalone technology and complementary technology. Hydrotreating based technologies are readily accepted partly due to refiner’s familiarity with the technology. While there are several excellent hydrotreating technology options available to address the gasoline sulfur compliance technical requirements, they are not without problems, including high capital costs, gasoline quality degradation and operability challenges, especially when the gasoline sulfur requirement goes below 30 ppm. For example, one of the challenges associated with hydrotreating-based technology has been the octane loss issue due to olefins saturation. The more selective hydrotreating technologies have partially alleviated the octane loss. However, this comes with additional capital and operating cost requirements. In addition to the capital requirement for the hydrotreater itself, refiners very often need to expand or build grass root hydrogen capacity to meet the hydrogen needs, which further increases the capital requirement for refiners. S-Brane is developed to fill this gap and to provide a complementary technology for customers to achieve the sulfur requirement. The core of the technology is to provide a low capital cost tool for a refiner to reduce its overall capital cost investment and increase its flexibility in terms of capital spending and future regulation compliance. We have discussed S-Brane technology at previous meetings with some preliminary results (1, 4).