Modification of FCC slurry oil and deoiled asphalt for making high-grade paving asphalt

With the rapid development of modern industry, high-grade paving asphalt is massively required to meet the demands for modern transportation. As one of additives, natural asphalt is indispensable since it can improve the performance of paving asphalt in all aspects. However, the application of non-renewable natural asphalt is increasingly restricted by its limited reserves. It is imperative to find alternative approaches to produce high-grade paving asphalt. Fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) slurry oil is an ideal soft component for producing paving asphalt due to its high content of aromatics and resins. However, its bad ageing resistance limits its application to only low-grade paving asphalt. In the present work, a novel approach for producing high-grade paving asphalt was investigated using chemically modified FCC slurry oil and deoiled asphalt (DOA). The FT-IR and NMR results showed that dehydrogenation and condensation reaction occurred during the ageing process. From a series of aliphatic alcohols and aldehydes, propanal was selected as a proper modifier to improve the ageing resistance of FCC slurry oil. The propanal-modified slurry oil possessed more substituted aromatic units and less aromatic hydrogen atoms than other modified slurry oils, thus showing better ageing resistance. With the increase of length of aliphatic chains in modifier, the modified slurry oil contained more and longer alkyl substituent group on aromatics. Compared with the cross-linked oil (slurry oil modified by cross-linking agent), modified slurry oil possessed similar ageing resistance but higher flowing ability. Also, the effect of operation conditions on the kinematic viscosity of modified slurry oil were investigated. Blended with modified slurry oil, the penetration ratio of asphalt product increased from 53.7 to 66.2, which met the standard of 70# paving asphalt. Both the microscopic observations and FT-IR results indicated that modification process effectively reduced the oxidation degree of asphalt product, thus increasing the ageing resistance. Consequently, with aid of this process, high-grade paving asphalt was readily produced from low value oil from downstream products of refinery, instead of the depleting natural asphalt.