If you have a FCCR might be.

luis

or a Vis-breaker Unit

DHURJATI SEN
Kolkata, India

Hi

Thanks for your feedback. But is there some way of not making an investment in FCCR or a vis-breaker unit.
Would there be a market for such product . where one could sell the vacuum residue portion to buyer who could use this a feedstock?
I understand that there are many refineries that do not treat this portion due to investment reasons, any ifea what do they do in case they do not have a FCCR or a vis-breaker unit?

Bala

fuel oil market is residual so they have to close.

luis

People have been looking for viable, feasible alternatives to cokers for decades.

They're still looking.

The end of high sulphur resid being dumped into bunker fuel for ships is just adding more urgency to the discussion. But no more solutions.

balaji28

No coker, no visbreaker, no fccr, you have to drink your residuum, because ships are using less and less bunker fuels.

luis

Refineries in Japan used to buy HFO as feedstock on the cheap many years ago - see if you can find a buyer for this. You may have to let slip some portion of the lighter ends at the vac tower into the bottoms to make easier to transport/handle and to make it attractive for the potential buyer.

One other option for recovery of FCC feedstock from the VDU bottoms is to use a solvent extraction scheme, which may use liquid C3, C4 or C5/C6 as the solvent. Licensed processes are the Kerr McGee ROSE and DEMEX from UOP. Up to half of the VDU bottoms may be typically recovered, and % recovery depends on the metals and asphaltene content in the VDU bottoms. The ROSE license was bought over from Kerr McGee by KBR in 1995.

A market for such product would depend on the modes of transportaion also, whether you have a dedicated pipeline or you would use tanker trucks.
Your location is also another important factor.

DHURJATI SEN
Kolkata, India

Bala,
I've performed several planning studies on this subject in the last 25 years.
There are other 3 options not mentioned up to now:
- residue hydrocracking;
- gasification / IGCC;
- asphalt production.
The optimal solution could not exist or (mainly) depend by:
- market conditions (prices and volumes);
- amount of residue;
- qualities of residue eg S, nature (aromatic / paraffinic), carbon content...;
- connections to other refineries / power / industrial plants;
- environmenta constrains...
Good luck!

The actual oil industrie is now directed to gasoline, hydrocrackers only if redirected to gasoline production, the market for explore the bottom of oil barril will be residual, and capacity of squeezs the bottom of oil barril with the present ambient restrictions was higly reduced.

luis

another trend is the integration of refineries with petrochemical complex.

The weakness of these solvent extraction schemes is high solvent loss. This may be, in actual plant operations, much much higher than what is claimed in their glossy brochures.

Thanks everyone for your valuable insights