Abstract

New process arrangements for upgrading of heavy oils and residua

Author(s): Sepehr Sadighi, Reza Seif Mohaddecy

In this paper we report the results of integration of residue fluid catalytic cracking (RFCC) and hydrocracking (HCR) units with a hydroconverting plant (HRH) in a crude oil refinery was studied. Initially, a target refinery with available HCR and RFCC units was simulated using Hysys-refinery simulator, and then HRH unit was added to this complex. After validating the wide plant simulator using actual and design data, four integration strategies were examined to increase the yields of gasoline and diesel. These cases named Simple series, Series, Parallel and Residue upgrading were compared to the base (designed) one. The results showed that by implementing the mentioned cases, the production yields of gasoline and diesel would increase considerably. For the best case i.e., residue upgrading strategy, the yields of gasoline and diesel would increase to 6.98% and 53.96%, respectively in comparison to the base case. Moreover, with the presented integration strategies, without any changes in the operating conditions, the bottomof barrel could beminimizedwhile fresh feed flowrates and their impurities remained constant.