TABLE OF CONTENTS Alan G. Bridge [*] and Ujjal K. Mukherjee
Chevron Lummus Global
Richmond, California, and Bloomfield, New Jersey
Hydrocracking technology plays the major role in meeting the need for cleaner-burning fuels, effective feedstocks for petrochemical operations, and more effective lubricating oils. Only through hydrocracking can heavy fuel oil components be converted to transportation fuels and lubricating oils whose quality will meet tightening environmental and market demands.
The Chevron Lummus Global Isocracking process, widely licensed for more than 40 years, has technological advantages for gasoline, middle-distillate, and lubricating oil production. Optimizing a refinery is always a matter of balance. Every benefit has a cost; every incremental gain in margin trades off against a loss somewhere else. Isocracking helps with this balance by delivering trade-off advantages with respect to product yield, quality, catalyst choice and run length, capital costs, operating costs, versatility, and flexibility. Through its families of amorphous and zeolitic catalysts, Isocracking provides refiners with essential flexibility in choices of crude to buy, products to sell, specifications to meet, configurations to use, and efficiency and profitability to achieve, all with the trade-off advantage. This chapter explains the process technology that provides these benefits.
[*]Deceased
Chevron s Lummus Global s hydrocracking process was named Isocracking because of the unusually high ratio of isoparaffins to normal paraffins in its light products. A high percentage of isoparaffins increases light naphtha product octane numbers and produces outstanding...
