Abstract
The solvent deasphalting (SDA) process is a heavy oil upgrading process and used to separate asphaltene, the heaviest and most polar fraction of vacuum residue (VR) of heavy oil, by using density differences, to obtain deasphalted oil (DAO). The SDA process consists of two main stages: asphaltene separation and solvent recovery. Solvent recovery is a key procedure for determining the operating cost of the SDA process, because it uses a considerable amount of costly solvent, the recovery of which consumes huge amounts of energy. In this study, the SDA process was numerically simulated by using three different solvents, propane, n-butane, and isobutane, to examine their effect on the DAO extraction and the effect of the operating temperature and pressure on solvent recovery. The process was designed to contain one extractor, two flash drums, and two steam strippers. The VR was characterized by identifying 15 pseudo-components based on the boiling point distribution, obtained by performing a SIMDIS analysis, and the API gravity of the components. When n-butane was used, the yield of DAO was higher than in the other cases, whereas isobutane showed a similar extraction performance as propane. Solvent recovery was found to increase with temperature and decrease with pressure for all the solvents that were tested and the best results were obtained for propane.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 265-270 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2016 Jan 1 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported by grants from the Korea Institute of Energy Research, the R&D Convergence Program of the Korea government Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) and the Korea Research Council for Industrial Science and Technology (B551179-12-07-00), and the Human Resources Development Program (20134010200600) of the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) funded by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy of Korea. We also would like to acknowledge the financial support from the R&D Convergence Program of MSIP and National Research Council of Science & Technology (NST) of Republic of Korea (CRC-14-1-KRICT).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, Korean Institute of Chemical Engineers, Seoul, Korea.
Copyright:
Copyright 2016 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
Keywords
- Butane
- Numerical Simulation
- Propane
- Solvent Deasphalting
- Solvent Recovery
- Vacuum Residue
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Chemistry
- General Chemical Engineering