Essay On Hydrotreating

The crude oil and the hydrocarbon products like gasoline, diesel, kerosene, aviation fuel and fuel oils contains impurities such as sulphur and nitrogen that have to be removed. In the refineries, unsaturated components such as olefins are produced during the process whereas sulphur, nitrogen, oxygen, halides etc. are already present in the crude oil. Today, most of the crude oils have very high sulphur content and is a very strong impurity that must be removed in order to meet the emission criterions that result from using the fuels in vehicles, aircrafts, power plants, heaters, and other methods of fuel combustion. Also, the catalysts present in the further refining units can be poisoned by the sulphur. In order to remove these impurities a catalytic chemical process called as Hydrotreating is used. The Hydrotreater was first used in America in the 1950s, and then the process progressed to Japan, Europe and other countries. Hydrotreating is also used prior to catalytic cracking to reduce the contaminants and to improve product yield, as well as to upgrade middle-distillate petroleum fractions into finished kerosene, diesel fuel and gas oil [6]

The hydrogen gas is pumped into the reactor feed stream resulting in a reaction with the sulphur molecules present in the stream. The reaction then results in the removal of sulphur in terms of hydrogen sulphide. Kerosene is a liquid hydrocarbon fuel which is an assuring energy