Separation and characterization of foulant material in coker gas oils from Athabasca bitumen

Abstract

Gas oil streams from the upgrading of oilsands bitumen contain toluene insoluble, gummy, solid foulants that cause process problems by plugging hydrotreater feed filters and catalyst beds. From a process optimization standpoint, it is of considerable interest to determine the exact origin and nature of this material in order to design remedial measures. We selected coker heavy gas oil (KHGO) from bitumen upgrading as the primary test material for this work but also include samples from other parts of the process. Typically, solids content of gas oils are determined by a filtration method. For the KHGO sample used here, this approach yielded a value of 45 ppm. We also compared solids content using ultra- and low-speed centrifugation techniques. With toluene as the diluent, both of these centrifugation methods gave virtually the same toluene insolubles (TI) value, i.e. 24 and 23 ppm, respectively. For paraffinic diluents the measured TI contents ranged from about 50 to 200 ppm. Our results demonstrate that KHGO may contain significant amounts of TI not measured by conventional filtration. Characterization of gas oil TI from different sampling points in the bitumen upgrading circuit showed that it is a nitrogen and oxygen rich organic material, associated with minor amounts of inorganic elements representative of ash-forming iron minerals and alumino-silicate clay. The most likely source for this intractable toluene insoluble fraction appears to be a low molecular weight pyrrollic species present in heavy gas oil. Such compounds are easily oxidized to produce insoluble polymers that can interact with inorganic minerals and metals, producing gummy material capable of blinding filters.