Publication: Movers & Shakers

Authors: F. Huber, S. K. Weber, J. Berg, T. Sauer, A. Haas, A. Purgstaller

Hydrocarbon Engineering, Volume 18, Issue 5, page 63-67, May, 2014

Hydroprocessing catalysts play an important role in a refinery and their selection is crucial for optimising refinery operations and increasing overall profitability. Catalysts evaluation processes typically involve many steps for selecting the best available catalyst that meets the selection criteria including proposal evaluations, economic evaluations and catalyst testing programs. The catalyst evaluation process generally starts with the request for technical proposals from different catalyst vendors as well as an initial benchmarking of all technical proposals. In these Paper studies, the supplier provides yield projections of the proposed catalyst compared to a base case technology. The most promising catalysts are then evaluated in a catalyst testing program under similar operating conditions to those applied in the commercial process. As a final step, an economic evaluation of the technically acceptable catalyst systems determines the preferred catalyst system.