RD's Koseoglu Refines Refining

DHAHRAN, October 21, 2009 --Saudi Aramco was recently granted patent No. 7,566,394 from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a process improvement called “Enhanced Solvent Deasphalting Process for Heavy Hydrocarbon Feedstocks Utilizing Solid Adsorbent.” The new process was invented by Dr. Omer Refa Koseoglu, a research science consultant at the Research and Development Center who leads the Clean Fuels Project Team.

Removing asphalt, or deasphalting, with solvent is a conventional refining process that has been employed for more than 50 years. The process uses a hydrocarbon solvent at high temperatures and pressure to eliminate as much asphalt as possible. The oil is refined further into transportation fuels and a small amount of asphalt, which is further processed to produce road asphalt.

Solvent deasphalting units are present in many refineries, including the Riyadh Refinery. But Koseoglu took a commonly known fact and turned it into an innovation. “The capabilities of solid adsorbents, such as natural clay, are well-known to take the impurities from the crude oil fractions (the various products that result from distillation, or fractionation, in a refinery), and their impact is well-known,” said Koseoglu. Research has shown that the crude oil fractions with a high natural clay content coming from clay deposits or treated with natural clay can be processed easily to produce transportation fuels.

In this invention, the solid adsorbents were introduced into the solvent deasphalting to improve the quality of deasphalted oil so that it can be more easily processed in other refining processes, such as in a hydrocracking unit or fluid catalytic cracking unit, to produce gasoline and diesel.

The solvent and adsorbent used in the process are recovered, regenerated and reused. The invention can be applied to existing solvent deasphalting units and does not require high capital investment.