Determination of organic nitrogen and phenolic compounds in sour wasterwater from ebullated bed hydrocracking unit

This project presents the procedure for determination of forty-five organic compounds in sour wastewater. The procedure is based on liquid-liquid extraction followed by gas chromatography. The analytical method with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry was used for identification of composition of the sour wastewaters with origin from ebullated bed hydrocracking unit. The analysis results are of essential for the optimization of H2S stripper and NH3 stripper operation and thus saving the environment. Gas chromatography with flame ionization detector was used to detect the complicated composition of the investigated sour wastewater samples. Among a wide range of detected compounds, in the sour wastewater were found alkyl benzamines, alkyl indoles and alkyl phenols. The developed procedure allows efficient recovery of the investigated compounds ranging between 85 % and 94 % with a relative standard deviation ≤ 4.6 %. These results show the potential of this technique for organic nitrogen and phenolic compounds monitoring in sour wastewaters coming from hydrocracking of vacuum residue.