TITLE:
Upgrading of Heavy Crude Oil with W-Zr Catalyst
AUTHORS:
P. Schacht, L. Díaz-García, J. Aguilar, S. Ramírez
KEYWORDS:
Heavy Crude Oil, Upgrading, Tungsten-Zirconium, Catalyst
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Chemical Engineering and Science,
Vol.4 No.2,
April
24,
2014
ABSTRACT: The main
problem of new crude oil reserves is the incipient increase of heavy crude oils
in the American continent, i.e. USA,
Mexico, Canada and Venezuela. These types of crude oils require several
treatments before refining. One of these treatments can be hydrocracking. In
this petroleum refining process, it is possible to modify the heavy crude oils
to light crude oils. In this paper, we try to use hydrocracking to improve the
quality of raw heavy crude oil, through some chemical transformations C-H
binding rupture using a catalyst containing active metals such as tungsten and
zirconium (W-Zr). After the crude oil was hydrocracked in presence of this
novel bimetallic catalyst, the hydrocracked products showed lower content of
asphaltenes, resins, sulfur and nitrogen. Also positive changes in the
viscosity of crude oil measured as a decreasing of this value were observed.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) gravity was significantly increased 6
units. Consequently, all these changes confirmed that the upgrading of the
heavy crude oil was successful.