Upgrading of coal liquids. Hydrotreating and fluid catalytic cracking of SRC-II process derived gas oils. Interim report

The objective of this work was to evaluate the applicability of commercial UOP hydrotreating and fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) processes to gas oils derived from the SRC-II process. All FCC feedstocks used in these studies were the 400/sup 0/F/sup +/ fractions from the raw and hydrotreated products. Four different FCC feedstocks, ranging in hydrogen content from 8.66 to 10.59 wt-% were prepared by topping the raw SRC-II gas oil and hydrotreated SRC-II products to remove 400/sup 0/F/sup -/ material. Rerunning the raw SRC-II feed to remove 5.2 wt-% of the bottoms removed most of the heptane insolubles and Conradson carbon precursor. The UOP DCB catalyst was used for hydrotreating the raw SRC-II stock. Results of fluid catalytic cracking showed that feed hydrogen content is a dominant factor in conversion and yield structure. As the feed hydrogen content increased, both conversion and gasoline yield increased, and carbon deposition decreased. In the range of conditions investigated, gasoline Research octane numbers of 97.5 to 106.7 were obtained. The yields of 650/sup 0/F minus distillates generated were as high as 93 vol-%. The yield and quality of alkylate from C/sub 3//C/sub 4/ products were estimated to be comparable to those obtained from processing a petroleum derived vacuum gas oil provided the degree of hydrotreatment is sufficient. It is concluded that SRC-II gas oil, or other coal derived distillate of smilar quality, can be processed into high quality gasoline by use of current hydrotreating and FCC technology.