Hydrocracking of Atmospheric Residue from Tsagaan-Els Oil, Mongolia

Abstract

Cracking is the complex physical and chemical process of converting high molecular hydrocarbons into valuable products such as gasoline fraction and light fuel fraction. There are several oil fields in Mongolia and three large deposits already are being exploited. The crude oil was classified as high-paraffinic crude oil because of its high viscosity and low yield of fuel fraction. The contents of asphaltenes and resins in the oil were low. Therefore, the cracking process is necessary to convert the paraffinic Mongolian crude oil to lighter distillates for the production of transportation fuels and chemicals. In this work, we studied the hydrocracking process of atmospheric residue (>350°C) to produce fuel fractions from high paraffin Tsagaan-Els oil of Mongolia. The hydrocracking experiment was carried out with and without a catalyst at temperature 450°C for 1-3 h under a hydrogen pressure of 5 MPa. Commercial Ni-Mo/Al2O3 catalyst (Ni 3%, Mo 15%) was used in the hydrocracking experiments for 1 and 2 h. The yields of light and middle distillates obtained by hydrocracking of the atmospheric residue for 3 h without catalyst were 15.8 and 17.7 wt.%, respectively. The effect of catalyst was tested in the experiments for 2 h. By the hydrocracking with catalyst, the yield of light distillate has increased 4.5 wt.% in comparison with the yield of light distillate obtained from the experiment without catalyst. In this study, we report that the atmospheric residue in the Tsagaan-Els oil could be liquefied by thermal cracking at 350°C to increase the yield of gasoline and diesel fuel.