Hydrocracking of Heavy Oil by Means of In Situ Prepared Ultradispersed Nickel Nanocatalyst

Abstract

This work adopts a water-in-oil (w/o) microemulsion method for the in situ preparation of ultradispersed metallic nickel (Ni0) nanocatalyst in heavy oil and assesses its hydrocracking activity. Catalyst preparation involved reducing Ni2+ added to the water pools of the heavy oil matrix in the form of aqueous Ni(NO3)2 solution using hydrazine. The volume of the aqueous precursors was limited to values which corresponded to visually stable single heavy oil phase. The product particles were collected by addition of toluene and characterized using XRD, TEM, and EDX. These techniques confirmed the formation of nickel nanoparticles of 22 ± 5 nm mean diameter. The hydrocracking activity of the as-prepared ultradispersed catalyst was evaluated using a semibatch reactor setup under 110 bar of hydrogen and 370 °C. Although no presulfiding was performed, XRD of the spent catalyst confirmed the formation of Ni3S2 nanoparticles with a mean particle size of the same range as the Ni0 particles. Results showed 2-fold improvement in the gaseous fractions, around 47% conversion of the residue, more than 70% reduction in the resins, around 50% reduction in the asphaltenes and an increase in aromatics and saturates in the presence of the ultradispersed catalyst.

Hydrocracking of Athabasca Vacuum Residue Using Ni-Mo-Supported Drill Cuttings

“…Interestingly, while the quality of the product oil remained the same compared to low-pressure runs, the liquid yield significantly increased at higher pressures, as seen in Figure 7. Typically, a trade-off occurs between liquid quality and yield during upgrading [49,62,63], however this was not the case with the low and high-pressure HDC supported drill cuttings runs. The sulfur and Conradson carbon residue (CCR) content of the feed, TC and high-pressure HDC in the presence of the supported drill cuttings can be found in Table 6.…”

“…Table 1 shows the elemental concentrations on the surface of the supported drill cuttings before and after upgrading, per EDX measurements. It can be seen that the supported drill cuttings is activated in-situ as the necessary metal sulfide sites are formed during the HDC reaction, despite no prior sulfidation [47][48][49]. Figure 3.…”

Ex-Situ Synthesis and Study of Nanosized Mo-Containing Catalyst for Petroleum Residue Hydro-Conversion

“…The processes of hydro-treatment of heavy oil and petroleum residues in the presence of nanosized and ultra-dispersed catalysts without conventional solid carriers in the catalytic system have been actively studied in recent years due to the depletion of light and medium oil reserves and have shown high efficiency [1][2][3][4][5][6][7].…”

“…The continuous phase was represented by petroleum residue with a high content of asphaltenes. This approach has been proven to be efficient in preparing dispersions with ultrafine and nanosized particles of metal oxides or sulfides in dilute suspensions (metal content <0.1 wt % for hydrocarbon phase) [6,16,17] and at a relatively high concentration of stable nanoparticles in the final dispersions (up to 10 wt %) [18,19].…”

Preparation of nano-Ni/meso-Ce–TiO2 by one-step in a sol–gel system and its catalytic performance for hydrogenolysis of xylitol

“…[24][25][26] On the other hand, pre-synthesized Ni nanoparticles would be oxidized and assembled aer calcination in the AcHE sol-gel system, and the average particle size of the Ni nanoparticles would not be controlled accurately. Compared to noble metal nanoparticles, the Ni nanoparticles are difficult to obtain because the precursor is more difficult to restore and they would gather easily.…”