Never before have refiners faced the challenges caused by dramatic changes in crude prices and refinery margins. However some worldwide trends have not changed, such as the need to shift refinery product distributions to a more diesel-oriented slate and to reduce residue fuel oil production. The required shift from gasoline to distillate fuels cannot be accomplished solely by modifications to current hydrocracking or FCC operations. New technologies will be required that achieve higher non-distillable conversion and increased selectivity to distillate-range products. Ideally, these technologies should be both cost-effective and commercially proven. UOP has responded to the needs for increased distillate yield and non-distillable conversion with the introduction of its latest residue upgrading technology offering, the UOP Uniflex Process. This high-conversion slurry hydrocracking technology contains elements of a commercially-proven slurry reaction system and the UOP Unicracking TM and Unionfining TM technologies. The Uniflex Process can achieve non-distillable conversion levels in excess of 90 wt% with distillate yield over 50 vol%. This paper discusses the features of the Uniflex Process technology, its yield and economic advantages over conventional residue upgrading technologies, and other applications of the technology. KeywordsResidue, Conversion, Upgrading, Hydrocracking, Slurry Existing Residue Conversion SolutionsConventional residue conversion solutions are well developed and, for the most part, operate efficiently within their technical constraints. Figure 1 illustrates the worldwide distribution of the major residue conversion technologies which refiners have installed. Thermal technologies such as visbreaking and coking account for approximately two-thirds of this installed capacity, with hydroprocessing, redeuced fluid catalytic cracking (RFCC) and solvent deasphalting, to a lesser extent, making up the remainder. Visbreaking and Delayed CokingVisbreaking is the oldest of all residue upgrading technologies. The large number of installed visbreakers reflects refiners' needs to minimize residue fuel oil cutter stocks. Few new visbreaking projects are being considered primarily because a visbreaker's major product is residue fuel oil for which demand is not increasing.A significant number of recent projects have selected delayed coking due to the technology's ability to fully This paper was presented at the Commemorative Int'l Symp. on the 50th Anniversary of the Japan Petroleum Institute, Tokyo, Japan, Nov. 4-7, 2008. * To whom correspondence should be addressed. * E-mail: Dan.Gillis@uop.com convert non-distillables. The product yields, consisting of light ends, naphtha, distillates, heavy coker gas oil (HCGO), and the byproduct coke are dependant on the feedstock qualities. The HCGO product is suitable for feedstock to downstream hydroprocessing, hydrocracking, and FCC units. For these reasons, the majority of recent grass root and major refinery expansion projects have selected the combination of d...
International Maritime Organization’s Marine Fuel Rule, or IMO 2020, is just around the corner. Few refineries are ready for the change to bunker fuel specifications caused by IMO 2020 where marine bunker fuel sulfur content will be reduced to 0.5 wt% from current 3.5 wt%. Many refineries around the world, who currently produce about 4 million barrels per day of high sulfur bunker fuel stocks, still need to invest in upgrading technologies. In the past Visbreaking was used to make Residue Fuel Oil (RFO) as it reduces the viscosity of the resid by thermally cracking the heavy molecules, thereby minimzing cutter stocks. It also has a relatively low capital and operating costs compared to other residue upgrading technologies. However, it concentrates contaminants (sulfur, nitrogen, and Conradson Carbon Residue (CCR)) in the product. As a result, it is not considered a viable solution for RFO sulfur reduction. Fortunately, there are several technologies available to upgrade the high sulfur residuum oil to high value products or low sulfur fuel oil as shown in Figure 1. The benefits and features of each of these options is discussed in this paper to provide an understanding of the various processes’ merits. Case studies are also provided to provide indications of which technologies are best suited depending on the specific scenario.
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