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Crude Oil Refining—Part 2
Published in Hussein K. Abdel-Aal, Economic Analysis of Oil and Gas Engineering Operations, 2021
Alylation is the process that produces gasoline-range compounds from the combination of light C3-C5 olefins (mainly a mixture of propylene and butylene) with isobutene. The highly exothermic reaction is carried out in the presence of a strong acid catalyst, either sulfuric acid or hydrofluoric acid. World alkylation capacity is currently 2.1 million b/d [1]. The alkylate product is composed of a mixture of high-octane, branched-chain paraffinic hydrocarbons. Alkylate is a premium clean gasoline blending with octane number depending upon the type of feedstocks and operating conditions. Research efforts are directed toward the development of environmentally acceptable solid superacids capable of replacing HF and H2SO4.
Zeolite
Published in Mihai V. Putz, New Frontiers in Nanochemistry, 2020
Adriana Urdă, Ioan-Cezar Marcu
Gasoline octane numbers can be increased by several methods. One process converts C5–C6 alkanes by isomerization on zeolites such as mordenite, modified with noble metals (Turkevich & Ono, 1969; Heinemann, 1981). Another process is the alkene/alkane (e.g., isobutene/isobutane) alkylation to obtain the so-called alkylate. This is a mixture of methyl-branched alkanes with high octane number, free of aromatics, alkenes, and sulfur, which is used for reformulated gasoline. The process uses zeolites, avoiding the disadvantages of liquid acid catalysts (HF, H2SO4) used in other industrial processes (Maxwell & Stork, 2001; Feller & Lercher, 2004). Isobutane and C3–C5 alkenes are used as raw materials, with trimethylpentanes having high octane numbers as the main desired components of the alkylate mixture.
Product Blending
Published in Mark J. Kaiser, Arno de Klerk, James H. Gary, Glenn E. Hwerk, Petroleum Refining, 2019
Mark J. Kaiser, Arno de Klerk, James H. Gary, Glenn E. Hwerk
Alkylate gasoline is the product of the reaction of isobutene with propylene, butylene, or pentylene to produce branched-chain hydrocarbons in the gasoline boiling range. Alkylation of a given quantity of olefins produces twice the volume of high-octane motor fuel as can be produced by polymerization. In addition, the blending octane (BON) of alkylate is higher and the sensitivity (RON – MON) is significantly lower than that of polymer gasoline.
Modeling, operability analysis and optimization of isooctane production over solid catalyst
Published in Petroleum Science and Technology, 2019
Hossain Ghahraloud, Mohammad Farsi
Alkylation is one of the most important refinery processes to produce gasoline from light components. In this process, isobutane and low molecular weight olefins are converted to alkylate product as a low Reid Vapor Pressure, low sulfur content and high octane number component. Alkylate can be added to motor and aviation gasoline to increase octane number. Generally, the alkylation reaction is performed in the presence of a strong acid catalyst such as sulfuric or hydrofluoric acids. In this process, a mixture of iso-paraffin and olefin are fed to the reactor and react and form a mixture of heavier hydrocarbons such as isooctane. Equipment corrosion, transport and handling hazards, and environmental liability associated with the disposal of spent acid, are disadvantages of the acidic catalytic process. Thus, researchers have focused on alternative alkylation catalyst technologies, primarily solid catalysts (Hommeltoft 2001; Feller and Lercher 2004). Among heterogeneous catalysts, zeolites attract more attention compared to other solid catalysts due to lower cost, safe operation and high selectivity. Deactivation by heavy hydrocarbons and coke formation on the catalyst surface is one of the main disadvantages of zeolites (De Jong et al. 1996; Taylor and Sherwood 1997). Different structures are proposed to decrease catalyst deactivation and enhance production rate, such as slurry, fixed bed and fluidized bed reactors (Rao and Vatcha 1996; Liang and Zhu 1997; Ketikidis et al. 1999; Roy et al. 2005). In the Alkylene Technology commercialized by UOP LLC, the alkylation reaction occurs in an adiabatic moving bed reactor over a modified zeolites catalyst (Meyers 2004). The deactivated catalyst in the reactor flows toward regenerator and after regeneration is recycled to the reactor. The AlkyClean Technology proposed by CB&I, is a cyclic process to produce alkylate in multi-stage fixed bed reactors over the zeolite USY catalyst (Lavrenov, Bogdanets, and Duplyakin 2009). In this process, to regenerate the deactivated catalyst, the reactors are changed periodically.