Metal Sulphides and Refinery Processes

Abstract

Refineries convert a wide range of crude oils into products, such as transportation fuels and feedstocks for petrochemical industries. Conversion processes, among which hydroprocessing in combination with crude oil distillation and product blending, play a key role in modern refineries, removing hetero-atoms and changing chemical structures. Metal sulphides are important in a wide variety of hydroprocess catalysts, not only as active components in catalysts but also as catalyst poisons. Tightening product specifications and poor margins pose increasing challenges to the refiners. Improvement of the refinery processes will enable the refiners to cope with this changing world. For improvement of the hydroprocesses, development of better catalysts alone is not sufficient; attention should also be given to process conditions and reactor configurations. In fact, optimizing the interplay of these factors is of prime importance. Modelling of the catalytic reactions and transport phenomena in the complicated refinery processes is a powerful tool, not only for optimizing catalysts, conditions and reactor configurations, but also entire refinery schemes. Models developed for such purposes range from relatively simple correlative models to complete reaction-networks. New generations of catalysts and reactors in combination with such a dedicated process and refinery modelling might enable significant improvements in refinery processes.