Crude oil upgrading processes are among the most energy-consuming operations in the petrochemical industry that are also very common and necessary. These processes are intended to remove hazardous components and contaminations such as metal and sulfur from crude oil. The presence of metals and sulfur may cause severe technical difficulties in the refinery processes such as corrosion, catalyst poisoning and deactivation, and ash formation. As a novel technology, microwave-assisted metal and sulfur removal of crude oil could be an efficient alternative for conventional methods such as Hydrodemetallization (HDM) and hydrodesulfurization (HDS). The distinctive characteristics of microwave heating make this technology a desirable alternative to conventional heating in several industrial applications and sectors.<br/>This study was aimed to develop a new process for microwave-assisted demetallization and desulfurization of crude petroleum oil by adopting the chemical complexation method and a demetallization desulfurization reagent (DMDSA). A comprehensive techno-economic analysis was performed to investigate the installation feasibility of the proposed process in petroleum refineries. The economic performance of the proposed process to treat 50,000 barrels per stream day (BPSD) of crude oil was investigated that resulted in estimating the total capital costs (CAPEX) and the total annual operating costs (OPEX) of 4.46 MUSD and 4.07 MUSD (0.23 $/bbl) respectively. The results show that the suggested process is economically advantageous compared to the existing commonly used crude oil upgrading technologies due to the significantly lower CAPEX and OPEX costs. A sensitivity analysis of the economic parameters by varying the main design parameters demonstrated that the required microwave power and the corresponding purchase costs of the microwave generators have the highest impact on the estimated CAPEX costs. On the other hand, the annual OPEX cost is a strong function of the DMDSA consumption and regeneration effectiveness. Therefore, an optimization of the main process parameters would be indispensable to obtain the best economic performance of the proposed process.

Process development and techno-economic analysis of microwave-assisted demetallization and desulfurization of crude petroleum oil

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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