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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

Related Publications

Kinetic Model Discrimination for Toluene Hydrogenation over Noble-Metal-Supported Catalysts

by Castaño, Arandes, Pawelec, Fierro, Gutierrez, Bilbao
Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. Year: 2007

Abstract

The hydrogenation of toluene has been studied using an integral fixed-bed reactor with a Pt/γ-Al2O3 commercial catalyst over a wide range of experimental conditions:  temperature = 100−250 °C, H2 inlet pressure = 0.3−1.9 bar, toluene inlet pressure = 0.04−0.15 bar, and space time = (2−10) × 10-2 gcat h gtol-1. Hydrocarbon molecules block the active sites at elevated temperature and toluene partial pressure, and, as a consequence, three reaction-controlled regimes occur:  (i) kinetic, (ii) surface coverage, and (iii) thermodynamic. The experimental data have been fitted to 23 kinetic models proposed in the literature (empirical and mechanistical), and their parameters have been estimated. The model discrimination has been performed based on statistical F-test and mechanistical aspects. A simplified kinetics model is proposed by introducing the thermodynamical equilibrium constant. Finally, that kinetic model is used for reactor simulation.

Keywords

HPC MKM