Technology for Producing Petrochemical Feedstock from Heavy Aromatic Oil Fractions

NOVA Chemicals’ olefins and polyolefins business in Alberta is primarily based on ethane as feed. Historically, Alberta’s competitive advantage in the petrochemical industry has been the plentiful supplies of low cost natural gas and associated ethane feedstock. The growing production of oil from oil sands and the accompanying heavy oil fraction presents a new opportunity for growth and feedstock diversification in the petrochemical industry, provided that these heavy oils can be transformed economically into feed to petrochemical plants. With an estimated quantity of approximately 2.5 trillion barrels of bitumen in the ground, the Alberta oil sands are one of Canada’s major energy resources. At present, this enormous quantity translates into as much as 173 billion barrels of economically viable oil, second only in size to Saudi Arabia. Thus oil sands are a significant hydrocarbon source not only for Canada, but also for the world. Over the past number of years NOVA Chemicals has systematically studied catalytic technologies that can be used to convert heavy oil sands derived fractions into olefins, aromatics-rich products, and other high demand petrochemicals. Work was carried out in collaboration with external academic institutions and with the support of the Alberta government focusing on selection and development of specialized catalysts and process technologies. The work has resulted in the development of two novel, breakthrough processes and a number of catalysts, which not only allow significant feedstock flexibility to the petrochemicals producer but also considerably decrease the amount of emissions produced and energy consumed per ton of produced high demand petrochemicals due to application of catalysis. This paper presents the process configuration and research results from studies undertaken and shows that it is feasible to produce petrochemical feedstock or basic petrochemicals from heavy oil fractions derived from oil sands at competitive costs via two different catalytic processes. Examples of experimental results of catalysts testing are presented for both processes.