Development of Light Cycle Oil(LCO) Hydrocracking Technology over a Commercial W-Ni Based Catalyst

Because of its high density and low cetane number, the light cycle oil(LCO) containing heavy aromatics(60%—80%) can hardly be transformed through the conventional hydro-upgrading technology. In this report, a novel LCO hydrocracking technology(FD2G) was proposed for the utilization of LCO to manufacture high value-added products. Through the ingenious combination of hydroprocessing catalyst and the hydrocracking process, the high octane gasoline and the ultra-low sulfur diesel(ULSD) blendstocks were produced simultaneously. The influence of catalyst type, reaction temperature, pressure, respectively, on the research octane number(RON) of produced gasoline was studied in a fixed bed hydrogenation reactor. It indicated that high reaction temperature and medium pressure would favor the production of highoctane gasoline through the conversion of bi-aromatic and tri-aromatic hydrocarbons. The typical results of FD2 G technology on commercial units showed that it could produce clean diesel with a sulfur content of less than 10 μg/g and clean gasoline with a research octane number(RON) of up to 92. It would be contributed to the achievement of the maximum profit of a refinery, the FD2 G technology could provide a higher economic efficiency than the other diesel quality upgrading technology under the current gasoline and diesel price system.