LUMPED KINETICS OF HYDROCRACKING OF BITUMEN

Athabasca bitumen was hydrocracked in a continuous-Bow mixed reactor o ver an Ni-Mo/gamma-alumina catalyst at 430 degrees C and 13.7 MPa. Dat a for the yields of distillate products from single-pass and multi-pas s operation of the reactor were fitted to a lumped kinetic model. Crac king reactions were represented as a minimal number of independent rea ctions by introducing the concept of stoichiometric coefficients to re present selectivities towards each product fraction. The model was tes ted by predicting the results of multi-pass operation using parameters determined from single-pass experiments. The reactions of the lumped components in the model followed the known chemistry for hydrocracking and pyrolysis. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.