Laboratory evaluation of the impact of the addition of resid in FCC

The conversion and product distributions from a mixture of 10% atmospheric tower bottom resid and a DO hydrocarbon cut similar to LCO that represented commercial feedstocks were assessed over two equilibrium commercial FCC catalysts in a laboratory CREC Riser Simulator reactor. The reaction temperature was 550 °C, the catalyst to oil ratio was 5.8 and the reaction times were up to 25 s. The conversion of the mixture as compared to the DO base feed was higher in the case of the most active, conventional catalyst, and remained very similar on the resid catalyst. Since the yields of the main hydrocarbon groups dry gas, LPG, gasoline and coke followed very similar trends when the two pure feedstocks were converted, the corresponding yields from the mixture also obeyed that behaviour, and were the consequence of the conversion reached. The impact of the different catalyst formulations was observed in, for example, the selectively different yields obtained from the conversion of the resid, and in the composition of the gasoline. Independently of the catalyst, the gasoline was more olefinic and less aromatic when the resid was present. It was shown that in order to evaluate properly a given combination of feeds, catalysts and conditions, they must be considered together.