Commercial analysis of catalytic hydroprocessing technologies in producing diesel and gasoline by light cycle oil

Abstract

Four main catalytic hydro-processing technologies of light cycle oil (LCO) were investigated in detail under typical pilot-scale operations aiming to provide industrial analysis of oil quality upgrading and to meet the various end-use applications. It is found that ultra-deep hydrodesulfurization (HDS) technology can effectively remove sulfur and nitrogen, however its performance on the improvement of cetane number and decreasing of density is limited. The property makes it suitable for production of fuel oils. Maximally improving LCO cetane number (MCI) technology is favorable for producing diesel with high cetane number by partial ring-opening of aromatics without side-chain cleavage. Medium-Pressure Hydro-upgrading (MHUG) technology partially converts LCO into naphtha for production of diesel with low density and high cetane number at medium pressure. Meanwhile, the by-product-heavy naphtha with high potential aromatic content occurs. Moreover, LCO hydrocracking (FD2G) technology employs relatively higher temperature with varied pressure, avoiding thermodynamic limits, to promote the conversion of di- and tri-aromatics into monoaromatics. This technology not only produces high octane number gasoline, but also upgrades the quality of diesel. The industrial analysis here could guide the design and optimization of LCO hydro-processing technology for fuel quality upgrading.