Hydrocracking of Vacuum Residue in a Slurry Phase Reactor: Effect of Reaction Temperature and Properties of Feedstock

The slurry phase hydrocracking was carried out in a 150 kg/d pilot plant with a change of reaction temperature and different feedstocks including vacuum residue (VR), thermal cracking residue (TCR), 58% VR + 42% DOA (VRD) and 32% VR + 27% DOA + 41% TCR (VRDT). The results demonstrated that the conversions of residue and asphaltene, and hydrogen consumption had a linear relationship with the increment of reaction temperature. The TCR, VRD and VRDT with high content of asphaltene had the characteristic of higher asphaltene conversion and coke yield, but the coke yield was still low, and less than 1.3%. In addition, the removal rate of sulfur was much higher than that of nitrogen, while that of nickel and vanadium reach above 77 and 88%, respectively. The light liquid fraction product could further transform into high value-added chemical materials or clean transport fuel, and the heavy liquid fraction product could utilized as a very good raw material for high quality products as needle coke and carbon-based materials.