Research and development of hydrocracking catalysts and technology

Hydrocracking (HCK), one of the main approaches to deep process heavy oil, is a catalytic conversion process where feedstock undergoes hydrogenation, S/N removal, molecular restructuring, cracking, and other reactions. It can process straight-run gasoline/diesel, vacuum gas oil, and other secondary processing fractions such as fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) diesel, FCC clarified oil, coker diesel, coker gas oil, and deasphalted oil and produce various quality clean fuels such as liquefied gas, gasoline, kerosene, jet fuel, diesel, and various quality petrochemical materials such as light/heavy naphtha and tail oil. In this chapter, the research progress on commercial HCK technology and its relative catalysts are discussed. The typical technical characteristics and the representative processes from different corporations, such as Universal Oil Products, Albemarle, Criterion, Haldor Topsoe, and SINOPEC, are also presented. The development trend of HCK technology in the future is outlined.