Atmospheric Residue Hydrodemetallization Catalyst Development

• Main Author: Victoria, Agatha
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/38508
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

The processing of petroleum crude oil commonly yields residue from distillation unit that could be further processed in the Residue Catalytic Cracking (RCC) to produce Light Oil with higher usability and economic value. Generally, distillation residue contains many impurities, such as metals, sulphur, and nitrogen. These impurities need to be removed to prevent damage to RCC catalyst. Hydrotreating is a catalytic process in which hydrogen is contacted with petroleum intermediate or product streams to remove impurities. Pertamina RU VI Balongan, which is one of Indonesia’s biggest oil refinery consumes 450 tonnes of catalysts every year for the residue hydrotreating unit. The first step of hydrotreating is reducing metal components (especially Vanadium and Nickel) by hydrodemetallization (HDM) reaction. The succes of this process is highly determined by the performance of catalyst used. One of the most important character from HDM catalyst is its support’s pore diameter and surface area. HDM catalyst needs to have large pore diameter which exceeds 150 A, and still maintaining its is surface area to be bigger than 150 m2/g. This character could be achieved by modifying alumina with chemical additives, including phosphor. Hence, this research aims to determine the effect of phospor addition to the properties of alumina support and find the recipe of support that can satisfy the HDM catalyst specification. P-alumina support is made by introducing H3PO4 as phosphorus source at alumina peptization batter. The support is characterized by XRD and BET to determine its micropore and macropore characteristic. The result showed that phosphor addition can inhibit the phase transformation of alumina. This phenomenon leads to increasing pore diameter, surface area, as well as pore volume. P-alumina support that satisfy the HDM catalyst specification can be achieved by adding 4,44% phosphor to the 700°C calcined alumina.