Energy & Fuels, Vol.32, No.3, 3420-3427, 2018
Integrated Supercritical Fluid Extraction and Fluid Thermal Conversion Process: Experiment Realization and Comparison of Thermal Converted Liquids
A new technology is proposed by the directly integrated supercritical fluid extraction and fluidized thermal conversion process, which was named the integrated supercritical fluid extraction and fluid thermal conversion (ISFTC) process. In the extraction unit of ISFTC, the heavy feedstock was separated into deoiled asphalt (DOA) and deasphalted oil (DAO). The DOA phase is fed to a fluidized-bed thermal convertor (FTC) without solvent separating, using hot coke to supply the heat. DAO will be qualified for fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) processing. The proposed process avoids the feedstock quality limit for both FCC and delayed coking (DC). It increased the overall liquid yield of vacuum residue (VR) upgrading and solved the problem of solvent recovery for the solvent-DOA phase at the bottom of the supercritical fluid extraction unit. A continuous laboratory apparatus was built to prove the concept. A Chinese petroleum residue was processed by the built apparatus at appropriate operating conditions. The total liquid yield of ISFTC, the DAO FCC liquid plus DOA FTC liquid, is 7 and 14 wt % higher than VR DC and VR FTC, respectively. The bulk properties, such as the molecular weight, carbon residue, density, viscosity, and elemental contents, of DOA converted liquid were compared to those of VR DC and VR FTC. The structure parameters based on H-1 nuclear magnetic resonance were also calculated. To investigate the molecular composition difference of acidic, non-basic, and basic heteroatom species in three samples, Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR MS) was applied with negative- and positive-ion electrospray ionization (+/- ESI) as ion sources. The quality and compositions of DOA FTC liquid are similar to VR FTC liquid but worse than VR DC.