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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

Morphological Investigation of Nanostructured CoMo Catalysts Studied by XPS and HRTEM

by Pawelec, Castaño, Zepeda
Appl. Surf. Sci. Year: 2008

Abstract

This work reports the morphological investigation of nanostructured sulfided CoMo catalysts by means of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). The catalysts were supported on Ti-modified hexagonal mesoporous silica (HMS-Ti) and P-modified HMS-Ti (P/HMS-Ti) materials. The oxide precursors were characterized by specific surface area (SBET), temperature-programmed reduction (TPR), diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy in the OH region (DRIFTS-OH) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) in order to elucidate the influence of the impregnation sequence (successive vs. simultaneous) and the effect of P-incorporation into HMS-Ti material on the morphology of calcined CoMo catalysts. Both TPR and XPS measurements indicate that the catalysts prepared by successive impregnation possess well-dispersed MoO3 and CoO phases, whereas their counterparts prepared by simultaneous impregnation additionally possess the CoMoO4 phase. For all sulfided catalysts, the presence of MoS2 phase with particle size in the range 3.3–4.4 nm was confirmed by HRTEM. Catalytic activity was evaluated in the reaction of hydrodesulfurization (HDS) of dibenzothiophene (DBT) carried out in a flow reactor at 593 K and hydrogen pressure of 5.5 MPa. P-incorporation into the HMS-Ti material led to an overall increase in HDS activity and the hydrogenation ability of the sulfided catalysts. All catalysts proved to be stable during 10 h time-on-stream (TOS) operation. The activity of sulfide catalysts in the target reaction depends linearly on the surface exposure of Co species in the oxide precursors, as determined by XPS, and on the morphology of the sulfide form of catalysts (surface density of MoS2 particles and their sizes) as determined by HRTEM.

Keywords

HCE HPC