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. 2022 Aug 17;7(34):30462-30476.
doi: 10.1021/acsomega.2c03876. eCollection 2022 Aug 30.

Intercriteria Analysis to Diagnose the Reasons for Increased Fouling in a Commercial Ebullated Bed Vacuum Residue Hydrocracker

Dicho Stratiev  1   2 , Ivelina Shishkova  1 , Rosen Dinkov  1 , Iliyan Kolev  1 , Georgi Argirov  1 , Vitaly Ivanov  3 , Simeon Ribagin  2 , Vassia Atanassova  2 , Krassimir Atanassov  2   3 , Danail Stratiev  2 , Svetoslav Nenov  4 , Dimitar Pilev  4 , Dobromir Yordanov  3
Affiliations

Intercriteria Analysis to Diagnose the Reasons for Increased Fouling in a Commercial Ebullated Bed Vacuum Residue Hydrocracker

Dicho Stratiev et al. ACS Omega. .

Abstract

The intercriteria analysis developed on the base of intuitionistic fuzziness and index matrices was applied to evaluate processing data of the LUKOIL Neftohim Burgas H-Oil ebullated bed vacuum residue hydrocracker with the aim of revealing the reasons for increased fouling registered during the 3rd cycle of the H-Oil hydrocracker. It was found that when the ratio of the ΔT of the 1st reactor to the ΔT of the 2nd reactor gets lower than 2.0, an excessive H-Oil equipment fouling occurs. The fouling was also found to be favored by processing of lower Conradson carbon content vacuum residual oils and increased throughput and depressed by increasing the dosage of the HCAT nanodispersed catalyst. The fouling in the atmospheric tower bottom section is facilitated by a lower aromatic content in the atmospheric tower bottom product. The addition of FCC slurry oil not only increases aromatic content but also dissolves some of the asphaltenes in the atmospheric residual hydrocracked oil and decreases its colloidal instability index. The fouling in the vacuum tower bottom section is facilitated by a higher saturate content in the VTB. Surprisingly, it was found that the asphaltene content in the VTB depresses the fouling rate. No relation was found of the sediment content in the hydrocracked residual oils measured by hot filtration tests and by the centrifuge method to the equipment fouling of the H-Oil hydrocracker.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Delta P of the middle pressure hot separator (a) and fouling resistance factor of the naphtha reboiler using ATB as a heating medium (b) variation for the period 12.12.2021–11.04.2022.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Atmospheric tower bottom skin temperatures (a) and vacuum tower bottom skin temperatures (b) variation for the period 12.12.2021–11.04.2022.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Variation of weight fraction of the processed crude oils in the LNB refinery for the studied period of 121 days (12.12.2021–11.04.2022).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Variation of sediment content measured as TSE (IP-375) in the H-Oil ATB product, TSP (IP-390) in the finished fuel oil, and weight average bed temperature (WABT) of both reactors (average reactor temperature) of the LNB H-Oil unit.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Approximation of the dependence of fouling rate on 1st reactor ΔT (a) and on the ratio R1ΔT/R2ΔT (b).
Figure 6
Figure 6
Vacuum tower bottom skin temperatures at formula image of 1.04 and 1.90 with and without HCAT injection.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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