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Upgrading renewables, secondary, and waste streams through innovative hydroprocessing catalysts and reaction pathways

Problem statement

Hydroprocessing is a well-implemented and versatile refinery conversion strategy, comprising a wide array of reaction routes such as: (i) hydrotreating, aiming for the hydrogenation of unsaturated hydrocarbons and the removal (hydrogenolysis) of heteroatoms such as sulfur or nitrogen; (ii) hydrocracking, for promoting C–C bond scission and the partial saturation of aromatics; or (iii) hydrodeoxygenation, for the specific removal of oxygen moieties. In this project, we investigate the conversion of highly polyaromatic feedstock like heavy fuel oil (HFO), pyrolysis fuel oil (PFO), or bio-oils from different biomass sources (i.e., agricultural waste, algae) for quality improvement and obtaining products with higher added value.

We seek new (thermo-) catalytic strategies and improved heterogeneous catalysts with increased activity and stability. We put advanced analytical characterization techniques (i.e., nuclear magnetic resonance, high-res mass spectrometry) to work and combine their results with modeling and statistical tools.

Goals

  • Develop a quantitative analytical workflow to analyze and interpret these complex reacting environments
  • Explore novel renewable and waste resources to obtain chemicals and fuels
  • Deploy ad-hoc catalysts and process conditions to incorporate these wastes in the refinery (bio- and waste-refinery)
  • Analyze process dynamics and kinetics
HPC

Related People

Gontzal Lezcano
Idoia Hita

Related Publications

Fuel production via catalytic cracking of pre-hydrotreated heavy-fuel oil generated by marine-transport operations

by Izaddoust, Hita, Zambrano, Trueba, Palos, Zhang, Epelde, Arandes, Castaño
Fuel Year: 2022 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2022.124765

Abstract

We examine the conversion of heavy-fuel oil waste generated by marine-transport operations into drop-in transportation fuels. The proposed conversion process comprises two steps: (i) hydrotreatment and (ii) fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) under industrially relevant conditions. CoMo/Al2O3 is employed as the catalyst for hydrotreating, primarily aimed at sulfur reduction. In the second stage, a highly intensive study of the FCC over an equilibrated steamed zeolite catalyst is performed. We provide a complete analytical overview of all the products and byproducts of these two reactions, including the coke deposited over the FCC catalysts using various characterization techniques, including high-resolution mass spectrometry. The hydrotreatment eliminates 67% of sulfur present in the original ship oil, while the cracking yields up to 47 wt% high-quality gasoline, containing 37 wt% aromatics, and 23 wt% i-paraffins. Based on the molecular-level characterization of the formed coke species and the performed parametric study, this work provides insights into the optimum operational conditions for minimizing coke deposition and improving the gasoline yield and quality.

Keywords

FCC HPC ANW