Application: RCD Unionfining process reduces the sulfur, nitrogen, Conradson carbon, asphaltene and organometallic contents of heavier residue-derived feedstocks to allow them to be used as either specification fuel oils or as feedstocks for downstream processing units such as hydrocrackers, fluidized catalytic crackers, resid catalytic crackers and cokers.
Feed: Feedstocks range from solvent-derived materials to atmospheric and vacuum residues.
Description: The process uses a fixed-bed catalytic system that operates at moderate temperatures and moderate to high hydrogen partial pressures. Typically, moderate levels of hydrogen are consumed with minimal production of light gaseous and liquid products. However, adjustments can be made to the unit’s operating conditions, flowscheme configuration or catalysts to increase conversion to distillate and lighter products.
Fresh feed is combined with makeup hydrogen and recycled gas, and then heated by exchange and fired heaters before entering the unit’s reactor section. Simple downflow reactors incorporating a graded bed catalyst system designed to accomplish the desired reactions while minimizing side reactions and pressure drop buildup are used. Reactor effluent flows to a series of separators to recover recycle gas and liquid products. The hydrogen-rich recycle gas is scrubbed to remove H2S and recycled to the reactors while finished products are recovered in the fractionation section. Fractionation facilities may be designed to simply recover a full-boiling range product or to recover individual fractions of the hydrotreated product.
Licensor: UOP.
