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Deeper residue upgrading
Responding to the challenges of future heavy oil upgrading
To meet the rising mobility needs of a growing global population in a more sustainable way, refiners face the challenge of making greater quantities of cleaner transportation fuels by higher conversion of heavier residue, and with lower emissions of greenhouse gases. Customised integrated solutions to get more out of fixed bed residue units are proving to be an effective route to meeting these challenges.
No longer “business as usual”
Residue upgrading is already well established in low-sulphur fuel oil (LSFO) production, bunker or marine fuel production, and heavy oil upgrading and feed pre-treatment for residue fluid catalytic cracking units. It is also used to get increased yield of more valuable transportation fuels.
The future of residue upgrading will be driven by several factors. These include more stringent LSFO specifications (due to tighter end-user emission controls) and lower sulphur content specifications for marine fuels (down to 0.5 weight% by 2020). Refiners will need to be able to meet these more demanding specifications using heavier feeds – because the days of “easy” sweet oil are over. And, in the longer term, reduced fuel oil demand will require deeper conversion of the heavy oil fraction to lighter transportation fuels.