Heavy Crude Oil Upgrading: Jazmin Crude

Advances in Chemical Engineering and Science, 2013, 3, 46-55, http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/aces.2013.34A1007
Heavy Crude Oil Upgrading: Jazmin Crude
Jesús Alirio Carrillo*, Laura Milena Corredor
jesusaliriocarrillo@yahoo.com
Ecopetrol S. A: Refining and Petrochemical, Instituto Colombiano del Petróleo, Bucaramanga, Colombia
ABSTRACT
Jazmin crude oil is located at the heart of Middle Magdalena in Colombia. It is heavy and sour crude oil with 43 wt.% of vacuum bottoms. It cannot be processed by conventional refining technology without being mixed with other lighter crudes. It should be upgraded to produce synthetic crude with higher concentration of distillates and lower acidity and carbon content.
In this paper eight upgrading alternatives are presented. The alternatives include the processing of the crude, reduced crude and vacuum bottoms of the Jazmin crude oil using the following technologies: Distillation, solvent deasphalting, visbreaking, Delayed Coking, and Hydrotreating. The experiments were conducted at pilot scale, and there were used standard analysis techniques such as ASTM. In this study it was found that Jazmine crude oil and its heavy components produce high distillate yields when they were processed with thermal conversion processes. In addi-tion those processes reduce the products acidity. Within the analyzed scheme the one corresponding to the visbreaking of the crude oil and the Delayed Coking of the vacuum bottoms from the visbreaking is perhaps the most attractive, giving 5.9 wt.% of gas, 78.2 wt.% of distillates and 15.9 wt.% of coke.
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