Mechanistic insight into the coke formation tendency during upgradation of crude oil in slurry phase batch reactor using MoS2 and its various oil soluble catalysts

Abstract

This work intends to provide a deep insight on how can the MoS2 and its oil soluble analogues synthesized using various organic acid ligands (oleate, palmitic acid, lauric acid, stearic acid) efficiently fits well into the landscape of refinery and petrochemical integrations. The slurry phase hydroprocessing of crude oil has been efficiently carried out at 420 °C temperature and 120 bar H2 pressure. The hydroprocessing of crude oil presents the prominent results by increasing the lighter and more valuable fractions in the crude oil, as obtained from SARA analysis result, boiling point distribution, viscosity, sulfur and MCR data. The oil soluble MoS2 catalyst (MLT) synthesized from sodium oleate presented better hydroprocessing activity (65 % VR conversion) than other catalysts due to the small crystallite size, greater hydrophobic interaction, low stacking number and slab length. In this study, the comprehensive analysis of the solid coke obtained from both thermal and catalytic reactions are conducted using the XRD to get various structural parameters (average layer distance between two aromatic sheets (dm), average inter-chain layer distance (dλ), average perpendicular height of stack of aromatic sheets (Lc), average diameter of aromatic sheet (La), and average number of stacked aromatic sheets (M)) to elucidate the coke formation mechanism. These findings highlight the crucial role of catalysts in activating supplied hydrogen gas and promoting the hydrocracking reactions.