Pilot plant experimentation to optimize the use of re-generated CoMo catalyst to process atmospheric and vacuum gas oil

Abstract

This paper presents applied research study on regenerated CoMo catalyst for various possible re-use for ULSD production. It is focused on the pilot plant testing of regenerated CoMo catalyst for ULSD production by processing LVGO & HGO blends at various ratios for re-use in another hydrotreater unit of refinery. Regenerated catalyst which was unloaded from commercial hydrotreater after its turnaround was evaluated using four different blends of LVGO & HGO.Experimental process conditions viz. LHSV 0.5h−1, pressure 57bar(g) and H2/Oil ratio 300Nm3/m3, were maintained while feed/blend ratio & temperature were variable parameters. Based on the pilot study results we anticipated processing of LVGO with HGO blended feed requires 5°C–10°C higher activity comparing with full HGO feed. Analysis of hydrogen content of feed & product and estimation of the catalyst life cycle has been discussed. Details of hydro processing pilot plant design; operation and data analysis are provided wherein which operating conditions were tuned to commercial unit. This experiment shows that by contriving computational methods and analysis techniques, it has become possible to calculate hydrogen content & catalyst deactivation rate using pilot plant test results to predict commercial unit performance. These were effective techniques used to validate the regenerated CoMo catalyst at pilot scale testing for optimized re-use in commercial refinery.