Process Technologies

FLEXICOKING™

Axens and ExxonMobil signed an Alliance Agreement to provide FLEXICOKING™ Technology and integrated resid conversion solution on December 2019. This Alliance combines ExxonMobil successful owner-operator experience with Axens’ complete portfolio of technologies to provide smart, commercially demonstrated expertise to help meet refineries’ needs.

FLEXICOKING™ is a unique technology, upgrading low value residues into high value liquid products, while generating high quality utilities through clean flexigas production that can be used as refinery fuel or for power generation.

FLEXICOKING™ is a continuous fluidized bed process that thermally converts heavy feeds to lighter products and high-quality utilities through clean flexigas production. Process heat for the thermal conversion and gasification step is provided by partial oxidation of coke. The process consists of three main vessels: coking reactor, reaction heater and coke gasifier.

Depending on feed characteristics, refinery scheme, and product yields targeted by refineries, FLEXICOKING™ unit can be installed stand-alone, or in a tailor-made combination with other residue upgrading technologies like H-Oil® offered by Axens, market leader in the field of residue conversion and hydrotreating technologies.

Visbreaking

Axens Visbreaking Technology is a commercially proven process with over 25 commercial references. It consists of mild thermal cracking applied to residues (Visbreaking mode (VB)) or heavy VGO or DAO (Thermal Cracking mode (TC)).

The objective is to reduce the feed viscosity for stable fuel oil usage, and produce the maximum quantity of cracked distillates. Axens soaker visbreaking technology displays several advantages over ‘standard’ visbreakers; the principal being that it delivers higher-value products. They are all oriented towards higher economics.

The technology may be applied to:

• Atmospheric or Vacuum Residues (VB mode)
• Vacuum Residues (VB mode)
• Vacuum Gas-oils (TC mode with or without recycle)

Solvahl™

Solvahl™ is an efficient solvent deasphalting process (SDA) that removes the asphaltenes, most metals and other impurities contained in atmospheric or vacuum residues.

The Solvahl™ SDA process produces a high yield of deasphalted oil (DAO) containing a minimum quantity of C₅ and C₇ insolubles. The content of metals and coke precursor compounds are also significantly reduced, making DAO a suitable feed for downstream Hydrocracking, Hydrotreatment or FCC units. DAO final destination can also lube production or IMO Bunker Fuel depending on the refinery scheme. With respect to pitch production, it can be valorized as bitumen, pelletize for solids fuel or CFB boilers. Whatever SolvahlTM products valorization, Axens has a huge know-how.

Solvents used in the Solvahl process can vary from C3 to C5 depending on feed properties, pitch valorization and downstream DAO process objectives. The relative yields of DAO and asphalt, as well as the characteristics of both products, are linked to the nature of the feed, the operating conditions and the solvent type.

Solvahl™ technology can be a 2 cuts SDA or declined into 3 cuts SDA as per request; in stand alone grassroot or associated to VR conversion technology (H-Oil®, Flexicoking™) Solvahl™ technology is focused on:

• Relevant and optimized separation of DAO and Asphaltenes with associated design criteria to reach specifications
• Control of DAO quality, and especially its remaining asphaltenes content, is a main concern as it impacts downstream catalyst performance and cycle length
• Opportunities to extract value from the produced asphalt (Bitumen, pelletization, CFB...etc)
• Efficiency of advanced extractor design and solvent recovery at reduced cost

H-Oil® Suite

Relying on the proven reliability of the H-Oil® technology platform, the H-Oil® Suite aims at integrating the upgrading of residue in the refinery’s environment at best, while saving energy and optimizing the use of existing facilities.

In H-Oil®+, the “+” stands for an “additional feature” that works with the basic H-Oil® process technology. Several options are available to meet the refiners need for valuable additional conversion points while keeping costs to a reasonable level.

Those advanced options include:

• Low space velocity to achieve 90+% conversion while maintaining product stability
• Adding HCAT liquid catalyst precursor to the solid catalyst system to further increase the conversion envelope by increasing catalytic hydrogen transfer, available catalytic reactor volume, and therefore dramatically increasing product stability. HCAT liquid catalyst is supplied by HTI.
• Integrating H-Oil® in a residue conversion block including with SDA,Coker or Flexicoking units, reducing the production of and increasing the value of the rejected carbon molecules.

H-Oil®

Axens is the leader in the ebullated-bed market with more than 25 references all around the world.

With its extensive operating experience, H-Oil® is the most mature and reliable solution for residue upgrading. H-Oil® meets the challenge of converting heavy feedstock residues into essentially distillate products, ranging from vacuum gasoil (VGO) to naphtha. Such performances are achieved in the original ebullated-bed H-Oil® reactor, possibly in combination with other units.

The process utilizes an ebullated bed reactor with daily catalyst addition and withdrawal to not only achieve high desulfurization rates but also a wide conversion envelope, VR conversion ranges from 70 to 95wt%. Thanks to daily addition, no shutdown for catalyst replacement occurs. The H-Oil® unit has a stream factor superior than 96%. One of the main technology features is its flexibility both in terms of feedstock and product slate; commercial units have demonstrated significant flexibility in their conversion targets while processing a wide range of residual feed streams from paraffinic Russian Urals to heavy Canadian bitumen. PyOil from crude to Petrochemical scheme is nowadays co-process in the H-Oil® unit.

Hyvahl™

Hyvahl™ is a high-performance RDS process with a perfect commercial operation safety record. It has been employed both for improving residue quality for use as an FCC feed and for the production of Ultra Low Sulfur Fuel Oil (ULSFO) addressing thus IMO 2020 targets.

The residue and hydrogen are pre-heated and then fed into the reactor section. Upgrading begins with a Permutable guard-bed Reactor System (PRS) to eliminate undesirable metals through hydrodemetallization (HDM), followed by a transition section and the final hydrotreating section for HydroDeSulfurization (HDS), HydroDeNitrogenation (HDN) and CCR reduction through HyDrotreating (HDCCR).

Hyvahl™ technology features:

• Can process AR/VR blends or 100% VR with high metals content
• Attains the most stringent ULSFO specifications with sulfur content as low as 0.28 wt. % (Middle East crude) throughout long cycle lengths
• Typical conversions range from 15 to 25 wt. %
• Produces low sulfur diesel
• Produces an excellent RFCC feed

Solvent hydrogenation

Axens’ Solvent hydrogenation unit uses a highly active catalyst and operates in the liquid phase under mild conditions to minimize the investment and operating cost.

The Axens Solvent Hydrogenation technology covers alternative configurations, with main reactor and/or a polishing reactor as function of the expected specifications

Alkyfining® (part of ALKEMAX™ SAA Block)

Axens Alkyfining® technology converts the diolefins and acetylenes present in the C₄ cuts, from any sources, into valuable olefins with high selectivity.

The reaction performs in liquid-phase, through a fixed-bed catalyst under mild temperature and pressure conditions.

Alkylation Unit - ALKEMAX™ SAA

ALKEMAX™ SAA technology is used in some of the world’s largest refineries. The units are designed with the operator in mind, offering high reliability, flexibility, and energy efficiency. ALKEMAX™ SAA technology provides proven solutions for high-octane alkylate production.

An optimal solution with:

• A tailor-made solution by tuning design capacities avoiding useless overdesign,
• An integrated management of effluents and impurities,
• An optimization of the overall process scheme,
• A fully integrated package to the customer: Alkyfining® (alkylation feed treatment if required) / Alkylation / C4 Isomerization processes

C₄ Isomerization (part of ALKEMAX™ SAA Block)

Axens offers C4 Isomerization technology based on the use of ATIS-1L catalyst, a very high activity chlorinated alumina catalyst.

ATIS-1L allows effective operation at low temperatures and delivers a very high equilibrium conversion rate of normal butane to isobutane.