Catalytic solutions to overcome IMO challenges
International Maritime Organisation (IMO) regulations regarding bunker fuels have been one of the biggest challenges for refining industry in history, imposing new rules for producing and trading residual bunker fuels due to the general limit in sulphur content of 0.5 wt% by 2020, and even lower in ‘Emission Control Areas’ (ECAs), where the limit is already 0.1 wt%.
Several solutions are available for both refiners and ship owners to overcome such a challenge. While for ship owners the solutions have to do with the utilisation of alternate fuels and end-of-the pipe solutions such scrubbers, refiners rely on process technologies to convert or desulphurise the residues that today are the main raw material to produce residual bunker fuels, such as coking, residue fluid catalytic cracking (RFCC), residue hydrodesulphurisation (RDS), and residue hydrocracking (RHC).
If the refiner’s choice is to convert the residues, this means that, instead of producing heavy fuel oil, the focus would shift to producing high value fuels such as diesel, gasoline, or even petrochemicals building blocks, increasing the refining margin and therefore enhancing competitiveness.
However, in most of the conversion technologies, there is usually a non-converted portion that will eventually be more difficult to deal with due to market conditions, trading restrictions or stability concerns when blended with other hydrocarbon stocks. To be more specific, these unconverted materials are pet-coke and unconverted residue from hydrocracking.
On the other side, RFCC technology offers the opportunity to convert residues into valuable fuels and petrochemical building blocks, with minimal to zero production of unconverted material, especially when the feedstock is previously pre-treated. Since the coke made during the cracking reactions is burned in the regenerator as a part of the unit heat balance to self-sustain the reactions, it is consumed internally with no net production as in coking processes.
In addition, slurry or decanted oil, the heaviest RFCC product, can be easily blended, with no stability concerns with other hydrocarbon stocks, to produce IMO compliant low sulphur fuel oil (LSFO), or even better can be sold to the petrochemical industry as a raw material to produce black carbon. The rest of the products are typically hydrotreated to produce clean automotive fuels.
BASF, as a lead RFCC catalyst supplier, contributes to enhance refiners’ competitiveness by providing state-of-the-art catalytic solutions to maximise conversion of residues to high value petrochemicals (such as propylene and ethylene), high value intermediate streams (such as butylenes or high quality fuels), while also minimising the production of slurry.
In this presentation, some study cases are presented where BASF catalytic solutions were used, in combination with the versatility of the RFCC process technology, to convert refining residues into high value products with minimum production of unconverted material. This combination is the ideal solution to overcome IMO challenges and at the same time provide higher competitiveness to the refining industry.
