Hydrocracking of vacuum residue by homogeneous catalysis

The heterogeneous catalytic hydrocracking process of residues convert heavy hydrocarbons, including asphaltenes into light distillates, removes sulfur and nitrogen, saturates aromatics and olefins and retains heavy metals (Ni, V, Fe, Cu, etc.). One of the greatest problems of the hydrocracking process is the high catalyst consumption due to its fast deactivation, the logistic of the supply of fresh catalyst and disposal of wasted catalyst may become very complicated because of the environmental regulations. In order to overcome this problem it has been proposed the use of more active poisoning resistant, however, this has only solved partially the problem. As an alternative, we propose the use of a liquid catalyst which has a strong acid function for cracking heavy hydrocarbons and a hydrogenation function to promote sulfur and nitrogen removal. This catalyst can be recovered and reactivated to be used again in the process with the additional advantage of being cheaper than solid catalysts. Experimental results show that by hydrocracking heavy oil using this liquid catalyst, more than 60 wt% of asphaltenes and heavy molecules were transformed into lighter hydrocarbons in the boiling range of gasoline, diesel and gasoil. Likewise, sulfur and nitrogen were removed by 60 and 30 wt% respectively. In this work the experimental results are presented and discussed.