« Renergie, Inc. Receives $1.5M Grant for Sweet Sorghum Ethanol Plant | Main | UPS Testing Modec Electric Delivery Van in London »
Chevron Unveils New Refining Technology That Converts Ultra-Heavy Oil Into Fuel; Up to 100% Conversion
7 March 2008
 |
| Chevron’s basic heavy-oil conversion process. The key is the preparation of the highly active catalyst incorporating the use of vacuum gas oil (vacuum resid). Click to enlarge. |
Chevron Corporation plans to build a pre-commercial plant at its refinery in Pascagoula, Miss., to test the technical and economic viability of a new heavy-oil upgrading technology called Vacuum Resid Slurry Hydrocracking (VRSH). VRSH has the potential to significantly increase yields of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from heavy and ultra-heavy crude oils and could be used to increase and upgrade production of heavy oil resources, according to Chevron.
The announcement came shortly after Italy-based oil major Eni signed strategic agreements with PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, that include Eni’s making available a similar heavy-oil processing technology: EST (Eni Slurry Technology). Both announcements indicate the growing reliance of refiners on processing heavy-grade crudes into fuels.
The Eni-PDVSA agreement is for the development of a block located in the Orinoco oil belt (Faja). The Orinoco belt is the world’s largest deposit of heavy oil with original oil in place equal to 1,300 billion barrels and huge reserves which are mostly still undeveloped (current oil production is approximately 600,000 barrels per day).
Heavy oils are characterized by low hydrogen to carbon ratios and high carbon residues, asphaltenes, nitrogen, sulfur and metal contents. The proven oil reserves in the world are assessed at approximately 1.2 trillion barrels, while the estimates on heavy and unconventional oil resources amount to about 4.6 trillion barrels, according to Eni. Even if only 10-15% of these resources are considered “recoverable” according to today’s upstream technologies, the quantity is huge—around 560 billion barrels, or about 70 years of US consumption at current rates.
Furthermore, the current “not-convertible” heavy fraction of the barrel (oil residues), currently marketed as fuel oil, represents a production volume of about 9 million barrels per day, an amount comparable to the total oil production of Saudi Arabia. Every year more 60 million tons of pet coke are produced all over the world as a byproduct of coking refining processes. These products have a high impact on the environment: their use as fuel in power production produces high CO2 emissions and pet coke is often accumulated in landfills.
This project will advance Chevron’s heavy-oil upgrading capability and is an important research and development initiative for the company. Given the increasing role of heavy oil in meeting the world’s growing energy demand and our significant heavy oil resources, this technology could provide a unique pathway to increase supplies of clean-burning fuels for the marketplace.
—Mike Wirth, Chevron executive vice president of Global Downstream
Chevron has been actively developing its VRSH technology since 2003 and has tested it successfully on a wide range of feedstocks in multiple pilot plants at Chevron’s research center in Richmond, Calif. Chevron’s research shows the technology can achieve up to 100% conversion of the heaviest feedstock, while the best current commercial refining technology achieves less than 80% conversion.
Chevron’s approach is based on a highly active slurry catalyst composition. The highly active catalyst is prepared using a process that employs a heavier hydrocarbon oil—vacuum gas oil (VGO) or vacuum resid. Chevron has developed two variants of the process, one of which uses a lighter oil such as a light naptha in addition to the VGO.
The catalyst is prepared by first mixing an oxide of a Group VIB metal such as tungsten or molybdenum with aqueous ammonia. This is sulfided with hydrogen sulfide gas (H2S) to form a slurry, which is then combined with a Group VIII metal compound such as nickel or cobalt. This moves to a mixing zone with an inert atmosphere into which the VGO is added. Further processing through a series of reactors and the addition of hydrogen result in the production of the catalyst slurry that will be used to upgrade the heavy oil in conjunction with the addition of more hydrogen.
 |
| Current Pascagoula refinery flow. Click to enlarge. Source: Chevron |
The Pascagoula pre-commercial plant will have a capacity of 3,500 barrels per day. All necessary permits have been secured, and construction is expected to begin later this year.
EST is a proprietary technology that has been under development for 20 years for the complete conversion of heavy oils, bitumens and asphaltenes (the hard part of heavy oils) into high-quality light products, eliminating the production of both liquid and solid refinery residues.
The core of the EST process is a slurry reactor in which the heavy feed is hydrocracked in the presence of molybdenum-based catalyst (molybdenum disulfide, MoS2), which suppresses coke formation and promotes the upgrading reactions, i.e. sulfur, nitrogen, and metals removal, and CCR (Conradson Carbon Residue) reduction.
Products from this reaction go to separators to recover gas, naphtha, middle and vacuum distillates, while unconverted material and catalyst are recycled back to the EST reactor. Final products are mostly light and middle distillates that can be converted to diesel or gasoline fuels.
In commercial demonstration plant tests, Eni found that the EST scheme can enable almost 100% conversion of heavy oils, resid and tar-sands to high-quality distillates, without any coke or heavy fuel oil production.
Resources
US Patent # 7,238,273: Process for Upgrading Heavy Oil Using a Highly Active Slurry Catalyst Composition (Chevron)
US Patent # 7,214,309: Process for Upgrading Heavy Oil Using a Highly Active Slurry Catalyst Composition (Chevron)
March 7, 2008 in Fuels, Oil | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBack (0)
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/22062/26870330
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Chevron Unveils New Refining Technology That Converts Ultra-Heavy Oil Into Fuel; Up to 100% Conversion:
Comments
This literally amounts to scraping the bottom of the barrel. Cracking very heavy fuel oil and even asphaltenes into lighter fractions requires a lot of energy, as does the production of the required hydrogen. On the upside, it's much easier to remove sulfur from the lighter products.
Note that refineries must sell all of their educts. The lighter fractions offer significant flexibility. However, there is only so much demand for bunker oil, coke and asphalt. The technology discussed in the article allows a refinery to accept larger volumes of cheap heavy crude. If successful, other refineries will follow suit and the premium commanded by the light sweet crude benchmark grades WTI and Brent should eventually shrink. Don't expect that to happen overnight, though - it takes years to implement refinery upgrades.
Posted by: Rafael Seidl | Mar 7, 2008 5:03:33 AM
Where does the hydrogen come from? 100% effiecency sound to me like there not considering the loss of oil used to make the hydrogen, some of the tar needs to be gasified and shifted to make hydrogen.
Posted by: Ben | Mar 7, 2008 7:46:49 AM
Asphalt has gone up in price in recent years. I would imagine that there is quite a demand for it. Heavy crude is a lot of what is available in many places and a better method is welcomed.
Posted by: sjc | Mar 7, 2008 9:47:58 AM
Where do refineries typically get their energy from? Does the refining process take grid electricity as an input? If so, refining large amounts of this stuff is gonna drive the price of coal up even more. The hydrogen issue will also push up the price.
Posted by: tripp | Mar 7, 2008 11:26:00 AM
I would guess that they get most of the heat energy from the feedstock...oil. There are so many products that come from refining that our modern world could not do without them. So oil and refining will probably be with us for some time to come.
Posted by: sjc | Mar 7, 2008 11:53:00 AM
Haha we're not running out of oil SUCKAS!
Posted by: suckas | Mar 7, 2008 12:13:03 PM
No, but we are running out of cheap oil.
Pyrolysis of biomass could compete with oil specially when you consider the CO2 neutral to negative nature of turning biomass into solid products.
Posted by: Ben | Mar 7, 2008 12:29:11 PM
suckas: And if the US wants the Venezuelan heavy crude they'll have to suck up to Chavez (now there's a revolting thought) or start claiming that Chavez has WMDs (as if anyone would believe you again). Better just to find a better way of getting around.
Posted by: Neil | Mar 7, 2008 2:40:10 PM
God, it makes me cringe to think what they did with the other 20% of the heavy oil that they couldn't use before.
Posted by: Dan A | Mar 7, 2008 4:35:19 PM
Some oil executive was suppose to have been quoted saying "burning oil for transportation is like burning a Picasso for heat".
There may come a day when people look back and wonder how we could have been so foolish to burn oil in engines and blow the exhaust out of tailpipes into the air that we breath.
Posted by: sjc | Mar 7, 2008 4:39:41 PM
Where does the hydrogen come from?Historically, from reforming natural gas. IIRC, GCC carried a news item about a BP refinery in California which is going to get its hydrogen from gasified petroleum coke (petcoke) and sequester the CO2.
it makes me cringe to think what they did with the other 20% of the heavy oil that they couldn't use before.You're driving on some of it. Some of it was thermally cracked into lighter fractions and petcoke. This process sounds more efficient than coking, though hydrogen is still required and gasified petcoke is going to be an increasingly attractive source. I expect that all refineries capable of handling heavy crudes will do well over the next decade or so.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Mar 7, 2008 9:13:24 PM
Actually, Chevron's announcement is based on their extensive experience with refining crude oil found in California, which has a highly viscous (very slow flowing) quality.
This is important because a large fraction of the world's known crude oil reserves contain highly viscous crude oil, and that could tremendously expand the known recoverable reserves crude oil.
Posted by: Raymond | Mar 8, 2008 7:34:18 AM
3500 barrels per day, assuming 55 gallons per barrel = over 150,000 gallons per day from the new system. Not bad. I wonder if they'd be doing this if gas was between $1.50-2.00 per gallon vs. 3.00-3.50 (soon to be 4.00) - I bet they calculated a break-even point and gas prices have been past that point, and are expected to stay past it for a long time to come.
Posted by: ejj | Mar 8, 2008 7:56:56 AM
It is a pretty safe bet when large long term investments like this are being made that gas is going to stay high priced from here on out.
Posted by: sjc | Mar 8, 2008 8:46:04 AM
Barrels of petroleum are 42 gallons apiece, not 55.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Mar 8, 2008 3:44:38 PM
I use the rough figure that 30 of those 42 gallons can be gasoline. I guess I just took 42 x .8 for the yield. With all the other products that come from the refining process, that could be a bit too rough for accuracy however.
Posted by: sjc | Mar 8, 2008 5:34:13 PM
Multi-national oil cos are being shut out of national oil dominated by Russia, Middle Eastern kingdoms/emirates, Latin American dictators, etc. They have to take what they can get. Fortunately, the price is right with super-heavy oils.
Speculators and hedge fund operators are keeping oil prices artificially high currently. This high $$$ oil brings unconventional oil into play--profitable even at $40 bbl. What is happening now is the sheer scale of unconventionals (tar sands, shale oil, heavy oils) is bringing bigger players into the game.
Posted by: Al Fin | Mar 9, 2008 12:20:27 PM
This is some detail on chevron's process. Note it says something about sulfur reduction.
Posted by: Charles Munson | Mar 9, 2008 7:04:06 PM
@sjc,
I concur! And have said similar things on these pages before.
It is foolish to take fine hydrocarbon feedstock that could be making a host of higher value products, from perfumes, to polymers to medicines and simply BURN it.
We all will be better off when our energy is consumed on the small scale as electricity. Furthermore that the electricity is generated from relatively cleam sources such as Hydro, Fission, and ultimately Fusion. There will probably be minor contributions from geothermal, wind and wave, but those sources are insignificant.
You'll note that I exclude "solar" which is the ultimate global warming source.
Posted by: stan peterson | Mar 11, 2008 10:22:28 AM
Of course, the sun is the ultimate source of hydropower...
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Mar 11, 2008 3:55:16 PM
Engineer-Poet - you are correct...thanks...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel#Oil_barrel
Posted by: ejj | Mar 12, 2008 11:40:12 AM
the patents for heavy oil conversions might allow for insitu recovery of a higher percentage of oil from existing fields....hg...
Posted by: Henry Gibson | Mar 12, 2008 7:42:03 PM
It is cheaper to convert 85% of the feedstock and gasify the residue to create Hydrogen. This cuts down on the use of NatGas.
Posted by: Steve | Mar 17, 2008 9:55:46 AM
Think Canada. They have almost a trillion barrels of bitumen in Alberta that when heated and liquified is considered ultra-heavy crude. This is huge since we get more oil from Canada than anywhere else. Hard to swallow but true. Hence is why the Democrats wanted to ban the use of Bitumen from Canada. With their last energy bill if you could call a tax hike for energy producers and cutting off America's largest source of imports an energy bill. Can't have easy to access to a huge stable source of energy to the north, that would not fit the marxist way of the left. no we all must pay carbon taxes and share in the suffering comrads. Lets see the left has stopped every effort to drill domestic resources, stoped the construction of new refinerys, and wants to tax oil companies who only make 10 cents on the dollar profits anyways and people complain about 4 bucks gas. blame a democrat for that 4 buck fuel. oh and yes Exxon made 30 billion last YEAR not quarter, but they paid over 300 billion in taxes to the govt on that profit, what other industry makes 10 cents on the dollar post tax and is still a viable industry...
Posted by: yeaisaidit | Mar 18, 2008 9:27:29 PM
