Ultra Deep Hydrotreatment of Iraqi Vacuum Gas Oil Using a Modified Catalyst

Abstract

A set of hydro treating experiments are carried out on vacuum gas oil in a trickle bed reactor to study the hydrodesulfurization and hydrodenitrogenation based on two model compounds, carbazole (non-basic nitrogen compound) and acridine (basic nitrogen compound), which are added at 0–200 ppm to the tested oil, and dibenzotiophene is used as a sulfur model compound at 3,000 ppm over commercial CoMo/Al2O3 and prepared PtMo/Al2O3. The impregnation method is used to prepare (0.5% Pt) PtMo/Al2O3. The basic sites are found to be very small, and the two catalysts exhibit good metal support interaction. In the absence of nitrogen compounds over the tested catalysts in the trickle bed reactor at temperatures of 523 to 573 K, liquid hourly space velocity 1 to 3 hr−1, and a pressure range of 16 to 20 bar, the results show an increase in conversion from 0.2214 to 0.6748 and 0.2920 to 0.7341 for CoMo and PtMo, respectively, with the increase of temperature, a little positive effect on conversions when pressure increases, and a significant decrease in conversion: 0.6748 to 0.3284 and 0.7341 to 0.3734 for CoMo and PtMo, respectively, when liquid hourly space velocity increases. The results showed a first-order kinetic of Dibenzothiphene (DBT) hydrodesulphurization. The activation energies are 75.399 and 67.983 kJ/mol for hydrodesulphurization of DBT over CoMo and PtMo, respectively.