AM-06-46 The Era of ULSD: New Challenges and Opportunities for Hydrocracking Processes

Description:

Hydrocracking has long been recognized as an extremely robust and versatile conversion process in the petroleum refinery. Depending upon local market demand and refinery economics, hydrocrackers have been designed to produce primarily either naphtha or distillate products. For example, there are about 70 operating hydrocrackers in North America and roughly half of that conversion capacity is geared to the gasoline market. This situation is in contrast with Europe where hydrocrackers are mainly for middle distillate production. Nevertheless, many commercial hydrocrackers have the flexibility of switching from gasoline mode to distillate mode by adjusting operating parameters such as cracking conversion, liquid recycle rate, and cut points of the products or recycle. When in distillate mode operation, the qualities of hydrocracker distillate product (e.g. sulfur, smoke point, cetane number) are undoubtedly superior to those produced from other conversion units such as FCC.