Study of accelerated deactivation of hydrotreating catalysts by vanadium impregnation method

The main causes of catalysts deactivation for hydrotreating are coking and metals deposition. In this present work, accelerated deactivation of hydrotreating catalysts was studied. In this respect, vanadium which is deposited with nickel during hydrotreating reaction was impregnated into the fresh hydrotreating catalyst. Different percentage of vanadium was impregnated and their hydrodemetalization (HDM) and hydrodesulfurization (HDS) activities were studied in bench-scale reactor of heavy crude oil. Accelerated deactivations for both HDM and HDS were observed on vanadium impregnated catalysts. The rate of HDS deactivation was faster than that of HDM reaction. The rapid deactivation of HDS may be due to the coverage of active sites by impregnated vanadium atom. The deactivation is slower when the V loading is low; but above 10 wt% loading a rapid deactivation is observed. A comparison of deactivation is made in between normal deactivation and the deactivation by vanadium impregnation. It was found that deactivation by vanadium impregnation is lower than that of normal deactivation. It suggests that at initial stage the formation of coke causes deactivation of the catalyst whereas at later stage when metals sulfides deposition is quite high, these sulfides take part in deactivation.