Cracking of Residual Oils over Laterite Catalysts

Abstract

Studies have been made on cracking of residual oils over various ore catalysts to produce light distillates and hydrogen. A laterite catalyst was found to have the following interesting characteristics. (i) Cracking of residual oils over a laterite catalyst gives a higher coke yield than that over other catalysts (Table 3). (ii) When the coke deposited on the laterite catalyst is heated in a nitrogen stream, the gas containing carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide is generated, and at the time same iron oxides in the laterite catalyst are easily reduced (Table 4).
When laterite catalysts containing 1.22-8.75 wt% coke were heated at 950°C in a nitrogen stream, the degree of reduction of their iron oxide showed a linear relation to the level of coke deposited on the catalysts (Fig. 5). The amount of hydrogen generated by the steamiron reaction increased with increasing reduction of iron oxides, reaching a peak at about 50% reduction. Both reduction of iron oxide and heat generation for cracking of residual oils were simultaneously achived by partial oxidation of coke on a laterite catalyst. The degree of iron oxide reduction and the heat of reactions were controlled by regulating the ratio of oxygen to coke (Fig. 13).
A processing scheme for cracking of residual oils and generation of hydrogen has been proposed (Fig. 14).