A bench-scale investigation of hydrocracking o Canadian Cold Lake bitumen was performed using a discharged hydrodesulfurization catalyst to produce distillable hydrocarbon fractions.
The cobalt molybdate catalyst, withdrawn from a commercial residue HDS unit, contained 12.9wt% carbon, 9.6wt% vanadium and 2.1wt% nickel as the deposits. The catalyst was crushed to 45-325 mesh and slurried with bitumen (whose properties are given in
Table 1) to obtain an oil-to-catalyst ratio of 100/3.37. Hydrocracking was carried out in two 5-
l reactors in series at a constant hydrogen pressure of 100kg/cm
2, temperatures of 430, 440 and 450°C, and liquid hourly space velocities (LHSV) of 0.27-1.25 volume of oil per volume of the reactors per hour.
The operating conditions and results of the nine runs are summarized in
Table 2. The conversion of 500° C+ material to lighter distillates shown in the last column of the table ranged from 47% to 88%. Temperature and LHSV greatly affected the conversion, which increased with decreasing LHSV or/and with increasing temperature. As the conversion increased, specific gravity, viscosity, Gonradson carbon residue, average molecular weight, and nitrogen and metals contents of the product oil decreased, whereas hydrogen consumption, yields of gaseous hydrocarbons, C
5-340°C fraction and carbonaceous substances increased. However, to attain the same level of sulfur removal, a higher conversion level was required at higher temperature than at lower temperature as indicated in
Fig. 3.
Assuming that the cracking rate is of the first order, and applying the rate equation of the continuous feedstirred tank reactors, Eq.(1)*, 500°C+conversion data obtained at 430, 440 and 450°C are plotted in
Fig. 1. The rate constants were calculated from the straight lines for the three temperatures. The temperatures and rate constants in the Arrehenius equation are plotted in
Fig. 2 and an activation energy of 55 kcals was obtained from the slope of the plot for 500°C+ conversion. Simlilarly an activation energy of 53 kcals was obtained fbr 340°C+ conversion as shown in
Fig. 2.
The product oil was fractionated into seven fractions using a packed column still.
Table 3 shows the yields of the fractions. The yields of naphtha fractions were relatively low and the yields of kerosene and gas oil fractions were high that would be the characteristics of this slurry reaction process as in the case of hydrocracking of petroleum atmospheric and vacuum residuess3), 5). The properties of the fractions are listed in
Tables 4-9. The nine runs are arranged in the tables in the order of increasing conversion. It was observed in some fractions that the content of aromatics increased and that of olefins or naphthenes decreased with an increase in the conversion. The fractions did not meet all of the petroleum fuel specifications, and each fraction, which colored rapidly in air, contained a considerable amount of olefins.
These results indicate that discharged HDS catalysts can be used in the slurry process to hydrocrack oil sand bitumen to give distillates in good yields. The distillates would, however, require upgrading to produce marketable fuels.
* The nomenclature in Eq. (1) is as follows:
k: rate constant, hr
-1V: volume of a reaetar,
lF: feed. rate,
l/hr
C
0: concentration of residuum in feedstock, wt/wt
C: concentration of residuumin product oil, wt/wt
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