Investigation of the fluid catalytic cracking of different H-Oil vacuum gas oils and their blends with hydrotreated vacuum gas oil

H-Oil vacuum gas oils obtained during hydrocracking of vacuum residual oils originated from the crudes Russian Export Blend, Basrah light, and Heavy Kazakh were cracked in a mixture with a hydrotreated vacuum gas oil in the LUKOIL Neftohim Burgas commercial fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) unit. Some of the H-Oil vacuum gas oils were also cracked in a laboratory FCC (ACE) unit. The results from the commercial and the laboratory tests showed that the laboratory FCC experiments in an ACE unit can be used to evaluate the effect of feed quality on the commercial FCC unit performance. The assumption that the conversion of a vacuum gas oil (VGO) blend in the fluid catalytic cracking could be considered as a linear combination of the conversion of the individual components made by other researchers was also confirmed in this study. The higher the hydrogen content in the vacuum residual oil of a crude is the higher the FCC conversion of the H-Oil VGO, obtained during hydrocracking of that high saturate vacuum residual oil, will be expected.