Meeting Future Clean Fuels Challenges via State-of-the-Art RDS/RFCC Catalyst Design

摘要

Refiners today are challenged to produce transportation fuels containing a level of contaminants close to zero. The United States, the European Union, and several Asian countries have recently passed legislation for ultra low sulfur diesel and gasoline. These new requirements force refiners to seek new catalysts for both their hydrotreaters and FCC units. The combination of a resid hydrotreater (RDS) upstream of a fluid catalytic cracking unit (FCCU) is core to a refinery’s economics. No other combination of units provides such a large percentage of upgrade of the residuum portion of crude oil into transportation fuels. Advanced Refining Technologies (ART) and Davison Catalysts are using unique collaborative approaches to help refiners meet these new stringent goals. In this paper we examine the impact on sulfur level of RDS catalyst system design with residuum fluid catalytic cracking (RFCC) catalyst selection. Extensive pilot plant testing on both the RDS and RFCC processes has been conducted to evaluate the impact of feedstock, process variables and catalyst design on overall system performance. ChevronTexaco’s state-of-the-art high-pressure, semi-commercial RDS pilot plants were used for testing the RDS catalyst systems. Using the RDS liquid products produced, Davison conducted extensive FCC pilot plant tests on several new cracking catalyst systems. Our studies show that, through a detailed understanding of operating constraints and objectives, Davison and ART can collaboratively develop catalyst solutions that significantly improve the profitability of the refinery. By considering the RDS and RFCC catalyst systems together, we were able to design an optimized system to extract the maximum synergy from the RDS and RFCC catalyst systems operating in tandem.