Catalytic cracking of heavy petroleum feedstocks on zeolite-containing catalysts promoted with metal chloride additives

The article presents the research results of the thermocatalytic transformation of fuel oil of West- Siberian oil in a batch reactor at atmospheric pressure, the active component of the catalyst is a metal chloride complex on a carrier, which is used as a deeply decationized Y zeolite in the H-form (HYmmm ‒ decationization degree 94%) with a hierarchical structure: micro-, meso-, macroporous. The process of applying the active additive to the surface of the carrier was carried out through a high-temperature melt of a metal chloride complex based on metal chlorides VIII MPT in order to increase the acidity of the cracking catalyst. To determine the structure and composition of the catalysts, X-ray diffraction analysis, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and differential thermal analysis (DTA) were used. The basic diagram of the laboratory installation is described and the experimental results are compared when varying the process temperature and the volumetric feed rate of raw materials. It has been shown that the use of a zeolite-containing HYmmm catalyst with a 5% addition of an active metal chloride complex leads to an increase in the yield of light cracking products (boiling point ‒ 350 °C) at a relatively low temperature of 450 °C and a volumetric feed rate of 3 h-1 with 30.7% wt. up to 47.3 wt.% at a volumetric feed rate of 2 h-1. It was also found that the highest yield of lower (C2-C4) olefins is 20.7% wt. observed at a temperature of 550 °C and a volumetric feed rate of 1 h-1. Based on the results of experimental data, the process of thermocatalytic transformation of fuel oil was optimized using “desirability” profiling in the STATISTICA software by modeling the characteristics of the process and equations describing these mathematical models were obtained. Keywords: catalytic cracking; fuel oil of West-Siberian oil; metal chloride complex; gasoline fraction; light hydrocarbons; X-ray diffraction analysis; scanning electron microscopy; differential thermal analysis.