HCAT® Enhances
January 2011
in Ebullated Bed Units
Neste Oil, HTI Announce Successful Implementation of HCAT ® Process
Neste Oil Corporation’s Porvoo
Refinery is home to the world’s
first ongoing commercial appli-
cation of HTI’s HCAT® heavy
oil upgrading technology.
Neste issued its formal Notice
of Intent to utilize HCAT on an
ongoing basis after it was used
in commercial trials through-
out most of 2010.
Technical data from the initial
commercial plant trials were
jointly presented by Neste Oil
and HTI at the Euro Petro
Consultants Ltd’s “8th Inter-
national Bottom-of-the-Barrel
Technology Conference” in
London this past October.
Joni Kunnas, Development
Manager at the Neste Oil refin-
ery, described how adding
HTI’s unique HCAT liquid
catalyst to the Neste Oil ebul-
lated bed hydrocracker
enabled them to:
Volume 1, Issue 1
Heavy Oil Upgrading
E-Mail us at:
at:
HCAT@headwaters.com
Raise reactor temperatures system. The combination of
by +9°C, resulting in a net solid catalyst in the ebullated
conversion boost of +10% bed reactor with the HCAT
over their base level. material enhances hydro-
Maintain sediment in resid cracking of the entire resid
product at or below “target” feed - including large, asphal-
despite higher conversion. tenic molecules - yet with
Increase throughput by 5 fewer side reactions, and far
tons per hour. less coke precursor and less
byproduct formation.
Reactor operations remained
stable when HCAT was in use, Ebullated bed units around
while downstream equipment the world can benefit from
fouling was measurably lower. HCAT addition. Resid upgrad-
ing projects currently in devel-
opment, with ebullated bed
What is HCAT? and other reactor types, may
In simple terms, HCAT enables also consider incorporating
a refiner to convert more resi- HCAT in their design.
due (bottom-of-the-barrel) into
higher-value distillates. HTI Partnered with
Specifically, HCAT is a proprie- Criterion on HCAT
tary technology in which HTI’s
catalytic agent, introduced with HTI has teamed up with Cri-
the resid feed, is chemically terion Catalysts & Technolo-
activated within the reactor gies to help oil refiners maxi-
mize clean fuel production
from heavy residual oil.
Under the Criterion-HTI alli-
ance, the proprietary HCAT
Hydrocracking Technology is
offered in conjunction with
Criterion’s advanced residue
upgrading catalysts for ebul-
lated bed hydrocracking. The
highly dispersed, oil-soluble
HCAT catalyst enhances resid
hydrocracking, including the
largest asphaltenic molecules,
allowing more of the resid to
reach the active sites of
Criterion’s state-of-the-art
ebullated bed catalysts.