Cracking of Heavy Oil Feedstock Using Catalytic Additives Based on Ferrospheres from Energy Ashes

Abstract

In processing a heavy oil feedstock, an urgent problem is to find new and less expensive, primarily cracking, catalysts. We have studied the activity of redox catalysts based on ferrospheres from energy ashes in the cracking of two types (paraffinic and asphaltenic) of heavy oil and paraffinic crude oil under autoclave conditions. It was found that at 450 °C and in the presence of 10 wt % of ferrospheres, the selectivity toward liquid products for paraffinic and asphaltenic feedstock achieves 95–96 % and 72 %, respectively. Compared with the thermal cracking, this catalytic system provides the composition of liquid products with the higher content of light products and higher percent of the gasoline fraction. The influence of ferrospheres is most pronounced in the cracking of paraffinic feedstock: compared with thermal cracking, the content of light fractions in the products of petroleum cracking increases by ~20 % and achieves 67 %, while in the products fuel oil cracking, the ratio of the gasoline fraction increases 14-fold. During the cracking, we detected changes in the phase composition and structural characteristics of ferrospheres, formation of surface carbonaceous deposits with different reactivity in the combustion, and accumulation of sulfur compounds from petroleum feedstock.