Hydrocracker revamp lifts product

flexibility
How an innovative moving bed technology enabled a major refinery to
improve residue conversion and crude flexibility

John Baric and Coen Hodes Shell Catalysts & Technologies

T
he refining sector is once again in a tran- mix to incorporate lower-priced heavy crudes
sition period. The International Maritime from Mexico, Canada, or Venezuela.
Organization’s 2020 fuel sulphur mandate However, compared with traditional grades,
has introduced a need for significant changes in a such crudes can present substantial challenges
refinery’s management of its fuel oil pool; demand because they typically have a high total acid
for gasoline and diesel continues to decline in number and high aromatics, metals, and nitrogen
some regions; and there is continuous pressure to contents.
sustain margins, especially as new capacity comes A high sulphur content is relatively easy to man-
on-stream in Asia and the Middle East. age with today’s high activity catalyst systems;
Consequently, two key objectives have however, metals such as nickel and vanadium
emerged: the need to reduce fuel oil production are extremely difficult to remove. The amount of
and to increase margins. lower-priced crude that can be processed is often
To reduce fuel oil production, refiners with an limited by the performance of the refinery hydroc-
abundance of capital could consider investing in racker or residue hydroprocessing unit.
the technologies that provide the highest conver- Other refiners want to take advantage of their
sion levels, such as slurry hydrocracking or ebul- hub location and invest in revamps to enable
lated bed residue hydrocracking, but these will increased flexibility for their bulk crude diet. This
be out of reach for most. enables the refinery to take advantage of short-
The combination of solvent deasphalting (SDA) term fluctuations in crude pricing, and increases
and deasphalted oil (DAO) hydrocracking offers the refinery’s economic robustness against longer
one of the lowest capital cost options for resi- term market disruption and trends.
due conversion, especially compared with slurry Studies by Shell Catalysts & Technologies have
hydrocracking. The depth of extraction depends shown that refiners with full flexibility to take
on the crude and the technology, which needs to crudes of differing qualities from several sup-
handle high contaminant feedstocks. ply regions can also capture margin benefits of
Although this combination is considered a rel- up to $0.5/bbl compared with those that have
atively new option, it has been applied at several a restricted feed diet. This could unlock a total
sites over the last decade. Traditionally, DAO value of up to $31.5 million if applied to 90% of
had to be processed in a fluidised catalytic crack- the core diet of a typical 200 000 b/d refinery.
ing (FCC) unit because of its high metals and Shell Hycon MB technology can be used as a
Conradson carbon residue (CCR) content, but can revamp option to remove constraints in the down-
now be processed in a hydrocracking unit (HCU) stream hydrocrackers and residue hydroprocess-
with a modern, well-designed catalyst system fea- ing units, and enable the desired crude flexibility.
turing a demetallisation catalyst followed by pre-
treat and cracking catalysts. About the unit being revamped
To increase margins, many refiners are shifting Pernis’s Hycon unit started up in 1989 and was
away from the traditional Middle Eastern crude designed to enable the processing of high metals

www.digitalrefining.com/article/1002518 Revamps 2020 1

 Pernis’s response was
VR hydrocracker mode
(1989-2018)
to install a new SDA unit,
Fresh catalyst Fresh catalyst
Feed: VR, 250 ppm metals to revamp the gasification
unit, and to repurpose the
Seven moving beds

Hycon unit by changing

Fresh catalyst its mode of operation from
VR +
hydrogen
VR hydrocracking to DAO
hydrocracking. The unit now
predominantly produces
on-specification Euro 5 diesel.
Products to
work-up As the new feed to the
section unit had lower levels of con-
Spent catalyst Spent catalyst Spent catalyst CCR reduction through
taminants, especially met-
HDM/HDS HDM/HDS HDM/HDS
hydrogenation (HDCCR)
Conversion
als, only the single moving
bed lead reactor was nec-
essary for demetallisation.
Figure 1 When it operated in VR hydrocracking mode, the Pernis Hycon unit had Consequently, two of the
three moving bed reactors followed by fixed bed hydroconversion reactors moving bed reactors were
converted to fixed bed mode
(see Figure 2).
DAO hydrocracker mode
(2018-) The key to the pro-
SDA added up front
Feed: DAO, 95 ppm metals
ject has been the ability of
One moving bed Shell Hycon MB technol-
Fresh catalyst ogy to remove metals from
heavy DAO feed, which can
DAO
severely limit the perfor-
mance of an HCU.
Products to
work-up About the technology
With high metals feedstocks,
section

Spent catalyst
even HDM catalysts have a
relatively short life, so fre-
Hydrodentrification
Bunker HDM HDS/HDCCR /HDS Conversion
quent catalyst replenishment
Figure 2 Now operating in DAO hydrocracking mode, only the single moving bed is necessary.
lead reactor is necessary for demetallisation because the feed contains fewer In the Shell Hycon MB
metals. Two reactors were converted to fixed bed mode technology, fresh catalyst is
semi-continuously added at
vacuum residue (VR) feeds from crudes such as the top of the reactor while spent catalyst is with-
Maya. This produced vacuum gasoil (VGO) for a drawn from the bottom. In this way, the catalysts
high conversion FCC unit and a modest, but low are constantly replenished and have a consist-
sulphur residue stream for low sulphur fuel oil. ent, high activity level with no real deactivation
Key to its operation were the three moving bed over time. Thereby, the technology allows full
reactors in which the hydrodemetallisation cata- decoupling of bulk metals removal from valuable
lysts were continuously replenished to maintain a fixed-bed hydroconversion duty.
consistent activity level without deactivation over Furthermore, this enables a relatively large
time (see Figure 1). The unit consistently achieved volume of demetallisation catalyst to be used;
two-year cycles, whilst processing 100% VR feeds. essentially, Shell Hycon MB technology enables
Fast forward to 2018 and the market had the catalyst activity of a large array of fixed bed
changed. The site’s management needed to HDM reactors to be achieved in one or two mov-
reduce exposure to the forthcoming changes in ing bed reactors, but without the resultant large
bunker fuel specifications and also saw value in pressure drop and consequent penalties on reac-
increasing crude flexibility. tor hydraulics and hydrogen partial pressure.

2 Revamps 2020 www.digitalrefining.com/article/1002518

 Atmospheric Atmospheric
residue residue
VGO Naphtha VGO Naphtha
HVU HCU HVU HCU
Distillates Distillates

Naphtha Naphtha
VR VR
Distillates Distillates

Gasoline Gasoline
HYCON FCC HYCON FCC
Distillates Distillates
(VR HCU SDA (DAO HCU
MODE) VGO MODE)

Fuel oil Hydrogen Hydrogen

Gasifier Gasifier

Figure 3 Block flow scheme of Pernis refinery’s residue upgrading before and after the revamp

The rate of catalyst replenishment is controlled This feeds the Hycon unit, which was
in accordance with the rate of metal deposition. revamped from VR hydrocracking to DAO
Special screens separate the catalysts from the hydrocracking mode. Shell Hycon MB technol-
process fluids before they leave the reactor. ogy is key here; it sits upstream of the fixed bed
The reactors operate in trickle flow to ensure reactors to enable the processing of 100% DAO.
the highest flow stability and the best reaction In addition, as the SDA pitch is sent to the
and temperature control. This also maximises the gasification plant, this required relatively small
temperature operating window. changes to enable it to handle a heavier stream,
Each moving bed reactor is equipped with pro- chiefly improving the feed preheat and tracing
prietary internals that optimise the distribution to enable the required burner feed viscosity to be
of fluid throughout the reactor while also allow- met.
ing catalyst flow during replenishment. Under- The project helped the site to reduce fuel oil
utilised spent catalyst can be recycled back into production by 35%, increase middle distillate
the system so that the costs of catalyst fill can yield, and also process heavier, cheaper crudes
be optimised and the overall catalyst activity that contain high concentrations of nickel and
remains at a constant level. vanadium. The increase in crude flexibility has
Particular attention must be given to the reac- the potential to add substantially to the site’s
tor mechanics, hydraulics, and proprietary economics, given its strategic location in a major
internals. However, as the Hycon unit has oper- trading hub.
ated for more than 30 years, valuable operating Revamping existing units and tight integration
experience has been developed which has also with the rest of the refinery meant that the project
been used to further develop and improve the could achieve a return on investment above 15%,
technology. a factor of two higher than the prediction for the
industry standard solution, a delayed coker.
About the Shell Pernis revamp The unit is designed to process crude from
With a capacity of 404 000 b/d, Pernis refinery Russia, the Arabian Gulf, and West Africa and
is the largest integrated refinery-petrochemicals South America, depending on the economic value.
manufacturing site in Europe and, with hydroc- The design DAO feed quality is shown in Table 1.
racking, FCC, and gasification units in its config- Shifting the feed from VR to DAO reduced the
uration, it has a high Nelson complexity index. levels of all the feed contaminants, especially
The project involved not only revamping the metals. This enabled changes in the design and
Hycon unit but also adding a relatively low cost operation of the Hycon unit. The lower metals
SDA unit upstream of that, and integrating these level resulted in only the single moving bed lead
units with the downstream existing gasification reactor being necessary for demetallisation. This
and FCC units (see Figure 3). enabled conversion of the next two three-bed
The SDA unit (a residuum oil supercritical reactors from moving to fixed mode. Overall,
extraction, or ROSE, unit licensed by KBR) pre- optimisation of the entire catalyst system has
pares high quality DAO that is suitable as a fixed resulted in higher conversion (up to 75%) for the
bed HCU feedstock. same two-year catalyst cycle length while pro-

www.digitalrefining.com/article/1002518 Revamps 2020 3

 cracker generates high quality
DAO feed quality
finished products (see Table 2).
Design case Urals Check case I Arab Light Check case II WAF
Specific gravity 0.960 0.973 0.953 The opportunity for other
Sulphur, wt% 2.48 3.45 1.67
Nitrogen, ppm wt 4000 2709 4273
refiners
Vanadium, ppm wt 32 13 19 Having demonstrated the
Nickel, ppm wt 10 5 10 technology’s relevance to
Metals (Ni+V), ppm wt 42 18 29
CCR, wt% 7.4 8.7 6.5 today’s market dynamics, Shell
Catalysts & Technologies has
Table 1 made it and its associated intel-
lectual property available for
DAO hydrocracking product qualities licensing. This could unlock
major value if the technology is
Naphtha Kerosene Gasoil DAO hydrowax placed in front of a DAO HCU,

Sulphur, mg/kg
(C5-160°C)
3-10
(160-225°C)
3
(225-360°C)
5
(360°C +)
20
a fixed bed HCU processing
Cetane number 58 high metals VGO, or fixed bed
Cetane index 60 RHDS reactors.
Smoke point, mm 20
Cold flow pour point, °C −10 Figure 4 shows the benefits
of installing the technology in
Table 2 an existing HCU or RHDS unit
with an SDA unit. As an SDA
unit has a relatively low invest-
1 Increase crude 5 Increase
ment cost, the economics of
flexibilty SDA yield DAO HCU
Increase middle
such a solution can be compel-
SDA with Shell Hycon MB
technology
3
distillate yield ling. The technology can also be
retrofitted to a DAO hydropro-
6 Decrease
To fuel oil
4
Increase lubricant/
petrochemical yields
cessing unit, where it can create
asphaltene
pitch more value by increasing the
Reduce fuel oil depth of SDA extraction.
Gasification plant 2
production For lower sulphur crudes,
asphaltene pitch can be routed
Figure 4 A typical DAO hydrocracking configuration with Shell Hycon MB tech- to fuel oil. Furthermore, Shell
nology and optional gasification of asphaltene pitch Hycon MB technology enables
a reduction of the fuel oil pool
by increasing the DAO yield
8 Cycle length from the SDA.
Increase lubricant/
1 Increase crude
flexibilty RHDS unit
4
petrochemical yields Figure 5 shows how the tech-
with Shell Hycon MB RFCC nology can be used to debot-
technology
3
Increase middle
distillate yield
tleneck an  RHDS residue FCC
7 Increase VR
2
Reduce fuel oil (RFCC) line-up:
processing production

Increase crude flexibility

Figure 5 A typical RHDS configuration with Shell Hycon MB technology The technology reduces the
reactor volume that is required
ducing on-specification, ultra low sulphur diesel. for demetallisation and fully decouples met-
The site is now evaluating minor changes to the als removal, thereby maximising the reactor
Hycon unit which would help to increase future volume that is available for value generating
cycle lengths to three years. catalysts for sulphur or CCR removal or hydro-
In DAO hydrocracking mode, the unit has cracking. So, whereas a fixed bed DAO HCU is
achieved the targeted higher conversion and an typically limited to about 30-35 ppm nickel plus
increased yield of high value products. In addi- vanadium, a DAO HCU with Shell Hycon MB
tion to improved refinery yields, the DAO hydro- technology can handle up to 100 ppm nickel

4 Revamps 2020 www.digitalrefining.com/article/1002518

plus vanadium. plus vanadium,
such that nitrogen or CCR con- 100
tent become determining for 90

DAO property/feed property in %

crude selection and feed heav- 80
iness. Consequently, the tech- 70
nology unlocks the use of high 60
metals crudes such as Maya 50
and high metals feeds such 40
as DAO, with high extraction 30
depths. 20
Similar benefits, including 10
consequent allowable higher 0
metals contents, apply to resi- 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
DAO yield in wt%
due feedstocks for RHDS units
(see Figure 5). Typically, a fixed MC RT DAO Total nitrogen Sulphur Nickel Vanadium

bed RHDS unit is limited to 120

ppm metals in atmospheric res- Figure 6 General curve for DAO contaminant levels
idue feed, if a one-year cycle is
required. Shell Hycon MB technology increases  Increase lubricant/petrochemical yields
the metals limit and allows additional (up to Shell Catalysts & Technologies has devel-
100%) VR to be processed. oped various hydrocracking process line-ups
designed to maximise naphtha yield (light
 Reduce fuel oil production naphtha as a direct feed for ethylene crack-
The scheme shown in Figure 4 increases DAO ers and heavy naphtha to CCR and aromatics,
yield and reduces SDA pitch. Furthermore, fuel so-called crude-to-chemicals) or to produce
oil production is reduced by routing the SDA hydrowax from VGO, DAO, or heavy DAO
pitch, which contains most of the residue’s met- feedstocks, which is an excellent feedstock for
als (nickel and vanadium), asphaltene, and CCR Group II or III base oils. These line-ups, used in
contaminants, to the gasifier. Consequently, combination with Shell Hycon MB technology,
it helps to reduce the site’s yield of fuel oil; at mean that more crudes and a larger portion of
Pernis refinery, this yield fell from 12% to 8%. the crude barrel become eligible for petrochemi-
Similar benefits apply for RHDS unit schemes cal and base oil or lubricant production.
and the increased ability to process VR feedstock For RHDS schemes, increased upgrading of
that otherwise would be routed to the fuel oil crude barrels to naphtha for petrochemicals is
pool (see Figure 5). possible, thereby supporting crude-to-chemicals
targets.

Increase middle distillate yield
Because the technology decouples contaminant 
Increase SDA yield
removal, mainly metals such as vanadium and With conventional fixed bed hydroprocessing
nickel, from high value hydroprocessing catalyst technology, the economic lift of DAO is typically
systems, it enables optimisation of the catalyst constrained by the catalyst cycle length owing
system in the existing reactor volume. More pre- to the contaminants (metals) in the DAO. Shell
treatment and cracking catalysts can be loaded, Hycon MB technology can process DAO with a
which results in the successful processing of much higher metals content to enable a higher
more difficult feeds for higher conversion and/or SDA lift (more DAO) while keeping the metals
a longer catalyst cycle length. content to the fixed bed part of the unit at eco-
A larger proportion of the crude barrel can nomic levels.
be upgraded to middle distillates, ultimately at Figure 6 shows a general curve indicating selec-
Euro 5 product specifications. Thus, with low to tivity for different contaminants in the feed and
medium capital expenditure, the refinery’s crude how this depends on extraction depth. The nickel
margin can be increased. and vanadium content of DAO has a strongly
exponential relationship to DAO yield.

www.digitalrefining.com/article/1002518 Revamps 2020 5

 Revamp options
The technology can either be
140
incorporated into an existing
120
HCU or RHDS unit or, if plot
100 HYCON SDA / MB reactor / HCU space in an existing unit is an
Metal in ppm

higher metal removal capacity of MB reactor

80 issue, a small demetallisation
60 unit can be built ahead of the
40 SDA / HCU existing unit.
20
metal removal of fixed bed Upgrading In the former case, the moving
bed reactors would be installed
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 inside the existing plot, between
DAO lift in %wt the charge furnace and the lead
fixed bed reactor, and the cata-
Figure 7 Impact of a Shell Hycon MB reactor on allowable feed extraction lyst handling system could be
depth for a DAO hydrocracker installed on an additional, opti-
mised plot.
Figure 7 shows how the extraction depth can be In the latter case, the new unit would contain
increased for a typical heavy Arab Gulf crude if a the moving bed reactors, the catalyst handling
Shell Hycon MB reactor is installed upstream of a system, a furnace, a separator, and a recycle gas
DAO HCU. compressor. This new unit would feed the exist-
ing one.

Decrease asphaltene pitch
Disposal of SDA pitch is typically a key eco- Conclusions
nomic variable in these projects. The lower By revamping its Hycon unit to a DAO HCU,
pitch yield resulting from using the technology Shell’s Pernis refinery has improved its com-
improves project economics significantly. This is petitiveness by being better able to respond to
valid regardless of the final routing or disposal of changing market dynamics. Crucially, it did this
the pitch. cost-effectively; tight integration with the rest of
the refinery meant that the project could achieve

Increase vacuum processing a return on investment above 15%.
Any atmospheric residue desulphurisation unit Key to this project was Shell Hycon MB tech-
currently processing 100% atmospheric residue nology, which provides high metals removal
can benefit from using the technology as it ena- capability for VR and DAO.
bles co-processing of lower value VR feed while Now available for licensing, it offers opportu-
still maintaining an economic cycle length and nities for other refiners facing similar challenges.
meeting the target product quality. A larger por- Placed in front of a DAO HCU, a fixed bed HCU
tion of the crude barrel can be upgraded to val- processing high metals VGO, or fixed bed RHDS
uable products without jeopardising product reactors, it could provide a relatively low cost
yields or qualities. way of reducing fuel oil production while also
enabling processing of a wider range of low-

Extend cycle length er-priced crude oils.
The technology helps to extend cycle length by
reducing the contaminants load (total metals John Baric is Technology Licensing Manager with Shell Catalysts
& Technologies, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
deposition) on the catalyst in the downstream
Email: [email protected]
fixed bed reactors.
Coen Hodes is Team Lead Hydroconversion with Shell Catalysts
Further, the fixed bed reactors rely less on their & Technologies, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
HDM catalyst volume. Consequently, the availa- Email: [email protected]
ble fixed bed catalyst volume can have a catalyst
package optimised for more pretreatment and LINKS
cracking to achieve increased hydrodesulphuri-
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