Posted on 03/07/2008 7:15:40 AM PST by Red Badger
Chevron’s basic heavy-oil conversion process. The key is the preparation of the highly active catalyst incorporating the use of vacuum gas oil (vacuum resid).
Chevron Corporation plans to build a pre-commercial plant at its refinery in Pascagoula, Miss., to test the technical and economic viability of a new heavy-oil upgrading technology called Vacuum Resid Slurry Hydrocracking (VRSH). VRSH has the potential to significantly increase yields of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from heavy and ultra-heavy crude oils and could be used to increase and upgrade production of heavy oil resources, according to Chevron.
The announcement came shortly after Italy-based oil major Eni signed strategic agreements with PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, that include Eni’s making available a similar heavy-oil processing technology: EST (Eni Slurry Technology). Both announcements indicate the growing reliance of refiners on processing heavy-grade crudes into fuels.
The Eni-PDVSA agreement is for the development of a block located in the Orinoco oil belt (Faja). The Orinoco belt is the world’s largest deposit of heavy oil with original oil in place equal to 1,300 billion barrels and huge reserves which are mostly still undeveloped (current oil production is approximately 600,000 barrels per day).
Heavy oils are characterized by low hydrogen to carbon ratios and high carbon residues, asphaltenes, nitrogen, sulfur and metal contents. The proven oil reserves in the world are assessed at approximately 1.2 trillion barrels, while the estimates on heavy and unconventional oil resources amount to about 4.6 trillion barrels, according to Eni. Even if only 10-15% of these resources are considered “recoverable” according to today’s upstream technologies, the quantity is huge—around 560 billion barrels, or about 70 years of US consumption at current rates.
Furthermore, the current “not-convertible” heavy fraction of the barrel (oil residues), currently marketed as fuel oil, represents a production volume of about 9 million barrels per day, an amount comparable to the total oil production of Saudi Arabia. Every year more 60 million tons of pet coke are produced all over the world as a byproduct of coking refining processes. These products have a high impact on the environment: their use as fuel in power production produces high CO2 emissions and pet coke is often accumulated in landfills.
This project will advance Chevron’s heavy-oil upgrading capability and is an important research and development initiative for the company. Given the increasing role of heavy oil in meeting the world’s growing energy demand and our significant heavy oil resources, this technology could provide a unique pathway to increase supplies of clean-burning fuels for the marketplace. —Mike Wirth, Chevron executive vice president of Global Downstream
Chevron has been actively developing its VRSH technology since 2003 and has tested it successfully on a wide range of feedstocks in multiple pilot plants at Chevron’s research center in Richmond, Calif. Chevron’s research shows the technology can achieve up to 100% conversion of the heaviest feedstock, while the best current commercial refining technology achieves less than 80% conversion.
Chevron’s approach is based on a highly active slurry catalyst composition. The highly active catalyst is prepared using a process that employs a heavier hydrocarbon oil—vacuum gas oil (VGO) or vacuum resid. Chevron has developed two variants of the process, one of which uses a lighter oil such as a light naptha in addition to the VGO.
The catalyst is prepared by first mixing an oxide of a Group VIB metal such as tungsten or molybdenum with aqueous ammonia. This is sulfided with hydrogen sulfide gas (H2S) to form a slurry, which is then combined with a Group VIII metal compound such as nickel or cobalt. This moves to a mixing zone with an inert atmosphere into which the VGO is added. Further processing through a series of reactors and the addition of hydrogen result in the production of the catalyst slurry that will be used to upgrade the heavy oil in conjunction with the addition of more hydrogen. Pascagoula
Current Pascagoula refinery flow. Source: Chevron
The Pascagoula pre-commercial plant will have a capacity of 3,500 barrels per day. All necessary permits have been secured, and construction is expected to begin later this year.
EST is a proprietary technology that has been under development for 20 years for the complete conversion of heavy oils, bitumens and asphaltenes (the hard part of heavy oils) into high-quality light products, eliminating the production of both liquid and solid refinery residues.
The core of the EST process is a slurry reactor in which the heavy feed is hydrocracked in the presence of molybdenum-based catalyst (molybdenum disulfide, MoS2), which suppresses coke formation and promotes the upgrading reactions, i.e. sulfur, nitrogen, and metals removal, and CCR (Conradson Carbon Residue) reduction.
Products from this reaction go to separators to recover gas, naphtha, middle and vacuum distillates, while unconverted material and catalyst are recycled back to the EST reactor. Final products are mostly light and middle distillates that can be converted to diesel or gasoline fuels.
In commercial demonstration plant tests, Eni found that the EST scheme can enable almost 100% conversion of heavy oils, resid and tar-sands to high-quality distillates, without any coke or heavy fuel oil production.
Resources
*
US Patent # 7,238,273: Process for Upgrading Heavy Oil Using a Highly Active Slurry Catalyst Composition (Chevron) *
US Patent # 7,214,309: Process for Upgrading Heavy Oil Using a Highly Active Slurry Catalyst Composition (Chevron) *
Snamprogetti’s Highlights EST Technology (Eni)
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Rest In Peace, old friend, your work is finished.....
If you want ON or OFF the DIESEL ”KnOcK” LIST just FReepmail me.....
This is a fairly HIGH VOLUME ping list on some days.....
KnOcK!............
-bflr-
pflr
Excellent. Let the invasion of Venezuela begin immediately. Dibs on all the chicks under 40.
Hope it works
I guess that is what they are doing with those high profits.
There are already other economically viable hydrocracking methods for Ultra-Heavy Oil currently in use, though perhaps this one is even better.
The REAL problem, though, is not extracting light-weight oil from the oil sands, but rather extracting the oil sands from the site.
Oil sand stocks don’t seem to have reacted to this news yet.
Regards,
Its been a while since pet coke was sent to the landfill. Its presently selling for more than $75/ton. The flip side of a coker, more asphalt supply, has been largely resolved by $300-$450/ton asphalt, which has stalled a number of coker projects at US refineries. Cokers pull an extra cut of gasoline and gas oils from excess asphalt streams and make a solid fuel called pet coke. 25 years ago, there was an excess of coke on the market because it was hard to find a market for the stuff. This has changed.
If Hillary had taken the profits, she’d have come up with something better than this years ago! /s
Exxon yesterday announced that they will “raise 2008 capital spending to more than $25 billion to cope with escalating costs for drilling rigs and engineers. ... [Exxon] will will increase spending on exploration, refineries and chemical plants by more than 20 percent from $20.85 billion in 2007”. The WSJ article says they are going after oil in many new places around the world that aren’t normally thought of as oil patches and are drilling in 2 miles of ocean. New recovery technologies are sending them back to fields that were closed a decade ago, too.
I guess they decided they’d better spend it before Shrillary got her mitts on it.
Hasta la vista, Chavez! Ain’t nuthin’ stopping the oil industry when they want something.
Chavez is dancing in glee right now, it makes his thick crap even more usable.
so, that is what they are doing with all those evil profits! Someone should tell Hillary.
Bookmark and thanks
read
...apparently this is good news not only for our enemy to the south but also our friends to the north.
Very expensive oil makes for all sorts of viable sources. Hopefully coal conversion and/or shale extraction will see a similar breakthough.
I was wondering if all that old road asphalt that’s ripped up every time they repave a stretch of highway could be re-cycled into fuel?..............
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