Estimation of kinetics of vegetable oil coprocessing to produce diesel in diesel hydrotreating pilot plant
Student name: Ms Saima Hamid
Guide: Dr Priyanka Kaushal
Year of completion: 2013
Host Organisation: Indian Oil Corporation Limited, Faridabad
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Mr Alok Sharma
Abstract: Increased demand of oil supply, need for energy security, environmental concerns, depleting
petroleum reserves coupled with deteriorating quality of the crude oil has led to the concept
of using renewable energy resources such as vegetable oils. The work in this report is based
on the experimental study on coprocessing of vegetable oil in diesel hydrotreating pilot plant.
Transesterification is one commercial method but comes with high investment costs and other
complications to produce typical type of fuel whereas hydrotreatment process is alternate to
replace transesterification. The main advantage of vegetable oil hydrotreating is that no
special infrastructure is required and the product (diesel) is compatible with the existing
engines. Study of biofuels and hydroconversion of non edible vegetable oils were also carried
out along with the operation, maintenance and engineering of a typical tubular fixed bed
hydroprocessing unit.
In the present work, experiments were conducted to study the kinetics of vegetable oil
coprocessing in hydroconversion reactor. The temperature and space velocity was varied
from 330°C - 350°C and 0.7 – 2.5 hr-1 respectively, and a pressure of 40-60 bar and H2/ HC
feed = 200-500 Nm3
/m3 was maintained. The feed employed was 20% Jatropha oil with 80%
oil in a fixed bed tubular reactor using catalyst NiMo. A method is developed to evaluate the
extent of reaction for the decarbonylation reaction and the predicted method was verified by
the Pilot Plant data of 20% coprocessing of mustard oil provided by R&D Centre of IOCL,
Faridabad. The effect of temperature and space velocity was studied on the yield of
hydrocarbon product; carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and water yields (which are the
products of deoxygenation pathways, methanation & water gas shift reaction), consumption
of H2 and selectivity of deoxygenation pathways. The kinetic parameters of the deoxygenation
pathways (HDO, HDCO2 and HDCO) were calculated and the result showed that the
reactions are of first order.
