Upgrading Waste Cooking Oil Combined with Crude Heavy Oil Stocktle
Abstract:
Due to environmental concerns relating to the disposal of waste cooking oil (WCO) and government policies discouraging the reliance on crude oil, upgrading WCO into biodiesel is a common practice. However, biodiesel is inferior to conventional diesel and biodiesel production requires the construction of specialized plants. This project investigates various methods to upgrade WCO combined with heavy crude oil stock which can be incorporated into an existing petroleum refinery. We propose a hydrocracking process to upgrade a 2,000 tonne per day feedstock of 20 wt% WCO and 80 wt% vacuum gas oil (VGO) into high quality diesel, gasoline, kerosene, and liquified petroleum gas (LPG). A process flow diagram and designs for key process equipment are described to illustrate how this process could be incorporated into an existing petroleum refinery. Overall, co-processing WCO and VGO via hydrocracking shows promise as a safe, commercially viable, and environmentally conscious way to upgrade wastes into useful products using existing refinery infrastructure.
Students:
Anna Iliach, Niall Murphy, Kyra Pollak, Inara Ramji
