Upgrading and visbreaking of super‐heavy oil by catalytic aquathermolysis with aromatic sulfonic copper

As one of the important in‐situ upgrading technologies, catalytic aquathermolysis has attracted worldwide interest for heavy oil exploitation recently. Aiming to upgrade and visbreak a kind of super‐heavy oil, we have synthesized a new type of catalyst — aromatic sulfonic copper to process it. The experimental results show that, using 0.2 wt.% catalyst and 25.0 wt.% water at 280 °C for 24 h, the viscosity of oil sample could be decreased by 95.5%, with 13.72% in the conversion of heavy content to light content. Furthermore, the structure and group compositions of heavy oil were characterized by FT‐IR, GPC, EL, 1H NMR and GC–MS. It is found that the catalyst could improve the pyrolysis of heavy oil, and remove some heteroatoms (S, O and N) in its molecules, which finally led to the upgrading and visbreaking of the oil. Additionally, in view of the low‐cost for synthesis and simple preparation of this technique, it is likely to have some good application prospects.

► Aromatic sulfonic copper has been synthesized to be a catalyst.
► Upgrading and visbreaking a kind of super‐heavy oil by catalytic aquathermolysis.
► The viscosity could be decreased by 95.5% at 280 °C for 24 h.
► 13.72% of heavy content is pyrolyzed to light content with some heteroatoms removed.
► The catalyst could improve the visbreaking and upgrading of super‐heavy oil.