Upgrading and Refining of Crude Oils and Petroleum Products by Ionizing Irradiation

Abstract

A general trend in the oil industry is a decrease in the proven reserves of light crude oils so that any increase in future oil exploration is associated with high-viscous sulfuric oils and bitumen. Although the world reserves of heavy oil are much greater than those of sweet light oils, their exploration at present is less than 12 % of the total oil recovery. One of the main constraints is very high expenses for the existing technologies of heavy oil recovery, upgrading, transportation, and refining. Heavy oil processing by conventional methods is difficult and requires high power inputs and capital investments. Effective and economic processing of high viscous oil and oil residues needs not only improvements of the existing methods, such as thermal, catalytic and hydro-cracking, but the development of new technological approaches for upgrading and refining of any type of problem oil feedstock. One of the perspective approaches to this problem is the application of ionizing irradiation for high-viscous oil processing. Radiation methods for upgrading and refining high-viscous crude oils and petroleum products in a wide temperature range, oil desulfurization, radiation technology for refining used oil products, and a perspective method for gasoline radiation isomerization are discussed in this paper. The advantages of radiation technology are simple configuration of radiation facilities, low capital and operational costs, processing at lowered temperatures and nearly atmospheric pressure without the use of any catalysts, high production rates, relatively low energy consumption, and flexibility to the type of oil feedstock.

Electric production of high-quality fuels via electron beam irradiation under ambient conditions

“…33,34 This could be due to a combined effect of the higher dose rate and higher number density of irradiated compounds. 36,[42][43][44] The combination of a high dose rate and high number density creates ideal conditions for generating reactive species with high concentrations. Whether these species react with each other to produce desirable products depends on the irradiated compounds and specific chemistry associated with it.…”

Molecular characterization of polar heteroatom species in oilsands bitumen-derived vacuum residue fractions by Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry

“…The common industry practice is to use energy intensive and costly pretreatment technologies such as coking and ebullated-bed hydroprocessing to remove heteroatoms and metals. The products from these processes require further processing to produce clean transportation fuels that meet stringent environment regulations (Gulyaeva et al 2017;Ng et al 2015;Zaikin and Zaikina 2016;Zhang et al 2017).…”