Another method of meeting today's refining challenges is improved hydrocracking. This process allows refiners to process lower-quality and, therefore, lower-cost crudes into high-quality fuels. Hydrocracking is used by itself or in combination with FCC to upgrade a variety of feeds, including VGO from conventional and heavy crudes, deasphalted oil (DAO), coker distillates, LCO, and residual fuel oil. It permits the refinery to increase the quality and output of fuel products as well as to adjust the balance of the product slate between middle distillates and gasoline. The world will witness a hydrocracking capacity surge with the addition of more than 4.4MM b/d from 2005-2020. Global hydrocracking (HC) capacity was up by 3.79% (almost 187.7K b/cd) from Jan. 2008 to Jan. 2009, according to Oil and Gas Journal's Worldwide Refining Survey published on Dec. 22, 2008. Specifically, this Report addresses hydrocracking methods to improve ULSD production, to process resid, and to upgrade renewable feeds.
Production of ULSD to meet global diesel needs
The hydrocracking market is currently booming with rising demand for diesel fuel throughout the world and a shift in hydrocracker product slates to produce more middle distillates, which include diesel/gas oil, heating oil, jet fuel, and kerosene. Middle distillates, which presently account for 35% of the global demand barrel, are expected to gain an additional 10% by 2015 to comprise 45% of demand. By 2020, global diesel consumption is forecast to rise to 26.25MM b/d. Currently, however, worldwide diesel requirements are around 2MM b/d less than gasoline demand.
Numerous process design and hardware innovations are compared and contrasted in this Report. High-pressure hydrocracking is an alternative to address the need to produce more diesel, but it has trade-offs with moderate-pressure hydrocracking. Another approach—taken when a medium-sized, FCC-based refinery is expanded—is to introduce a mild hydrocracking unit upstream of the FCCU to maintain that unit at full capacity. New refineries are being planned that are non-FCC-based and are specifically oriented toward diesel production. They will hydrocrack heavy oil and VGO. Companies have turned to two-stage recycle (TSR) hydrocracking and reverse-staging configurations, which have advantages and disadvantages compared to other process schemes. Methods to operate at lower conversion per pass in order to increase middle distillate selectivity are also addressed, in addition to advances in monitoring and control.
Catalyst improvements are presented as new work to improve HDS activity, to reduce catalytic deactivation, and to increase cycle length is being carried out. The development in non-precious metal catalysts, heteropolyanions to improve metal dispersions, beta zeolite, and the acid-cracking-based formulations of highly-active hydrocracking catalysts has added flexibility in the operations of hydroprocessing units. New formulations that employ amorphous silica-alumina supports and dealuminated Y-zeolites are available and offer high activity with high stability. These designs allow for lower operating pressures, increased run length, and higher diesel yields. Another central focus is reducing hydrogen consumption while maintaining product quality. Catalysts that could withstand organic nitrogen contamination are being developed for lower-cost, single-stage units. The addition of metal traps upstream of the hydroprocessing unit is one solution to protect highly-active catalyst from high-metals feeds.
There is opportunity for hydrocracking integration in simple and complex refineries. Certain units and configurations are shown to benefit from the addition of hydrocracking. Integration with the hydrotreating unit to achieve optimum heat and hydrogen balances, and processing various streams from the FCCU, the coker, the visbreaker, and the deasphalting unit are also discussed in this Report.
Hydrocracking of Fischer-Tropsch hydrocarbons and other renewables
This Report identifies and analyzes many renewable feed projects undertaken by refiners and vendors to incorporate renewables into refinery hydrocrackers. One of the many hurdles is the effect of oxygenates on commercial catalysts during hydrocracking. We also incorporate other works not widely known in the industry at the moment Some of the known endeavors include:
Finally, since biomass gasification and F‑T conversion is considered the most promising route in next-generation biofuels developments, refiners should closely monitor the latest refinery-related advances as well as future directions. Robust R&D activity in this area resulting in numerous patents awarded recently supports this assessment. Furthermore, gasification with carbon capture and the use of biomass as feedstock should help refiners meet CO2 emissions-reduction requirements.
Increasing productivity and improving energy efficiency
With the current global economic situation and the uncertainty in the long-term market for crudes, there is a need for processes that not only improve productivity but also increase the energy efficiency of the hydrocracker, leading to savings in both capital and operating costs. Processes and catalysts that increase the efficiency of hydrogen utilization on the unit along with catalysts that achieve longer cycle length are solutions currently being marketed. Also, the use of process control software can lead to an improvement in productivity on the unit.
Finally, this Report concludes with a significant section, "Strategic Analysis and Recommendations," which consists of two parts. First, we provide insights into the technology trends of FCC, hydrotreating, and hydrocracking and how the latest R&D works could solve pending environmental and market issues. Recommendations are also made to the global refining industry, which has found the distinct objectives of meeting fuel supply security and environmental requirements becoming very blurred. The second part presents scenario studies for refiners in each region, who have their own sets of internal and external operating goals. In particular, the refinery's response to fuel reformulation, fuel demand growth, product shift, propylene demand, opportunities for processing heavy oils and resids, mandated biofuels usage, and requirements to comply with CO2 reduction legislation are addressed.