Canadian oil sands bitumen is either diluted by light hydrocarbons or upgraded to synthetic crude oil in order to meet pipeline specifications for transportation to refineries. Environmental and economic challenges associated with preparing a pipelineable bitumen product using the above-mentioned approaches are leading the oil sands industry towards the development of bitumen partial upgrading technologies. These technologies are used to upgrade bitumen only to a level at which the pipeline specifications (API gravity, viscosity and olefin content) are met without the use of, or at least with reduced need for, diluent. The aim of this study is to assess a bitumen partial upgrading scheme by means of modeling and simulation.<br/>The proposed scheme consists of a bitumen solvent deasphalting step at the front, followed by visbreaking of the vacuum residue fraction of the deasphalted product, and a finishing hydrotreating step on the naphtha portion of the thermally cracked product to eliminate olefins. The visbreaker can operate in once-through mode, where only fresh product from deasphalting is processed or in recycle mode, where the heavy portion of the visbroken oil is recycled to the reactor. Process simulation was carried out in a commercial software, combined with customized reactor models developed using in-house and literature data. Simulations allowed quantification of product yields and properties in the different operation modes.<br/>Comparing the two operation modes in the visbreaker, it is found that better product characteristics are obtained in the recycle mode, at the expense of lower liquid product yields (71 wt%) with respect to the once-through operation mode (78 wt%). The liquid product from the recycle mode has lower content of vacuum residue, almost no asphaltenes, higher API gravity and lower kinematic viscosity than that from the once-through mode. Product viscosity is reduced well enough to meet the pipeline specifications, however, small amounts of diluent are still needed that the partially upgraded products from either mode meet the API gravity specification.

Process modeling and simulation of bitumen partial upgrading: Analysis of thermal cracking operation modes

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

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