Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

In recent years, petroleum industries are facing tremendous challenges due to more stringent environmental regulations coupled with increasing reliance on heavy crude oil sands derived bitumen. Syncrude Canada Ltd. currently produces 250,000 bbl/day of synthetic crude oil from the oil sand. The heavy gas oil, which is a major component of this synthetic crude oil contains higher amounts of sulfur ( 4 wt%) and nitrogen ( 0.4 wt. %), which need to be removed to meet specifications of downstream refining processes. Although the removal of sulfur is relatively easy, it is difficult to remove nitrogen from oil sands derived oils with above hydroteating catalyst. It is well known that the catalytic performance of Ni-Mo hydrotreating catalyst depends on the support used to a certain extent, since. Recently there have been growing interests in the synthesis of new molecular sieves extending the pore diameter to the mesoporous region. The mesoporous molecular sieves are obtained with various structures and pore diameters that can be controlled over a wide range (1.6-30nm). These new molecular sieves offer great potential for the shape-selective sensing, adsorption, and catalysis of large species that were limited by the micropores (typically less than 1nm) of zeolites. The present research proposal aims at the development of highly active Ni-Mo sulfide catalysts supported on high surface area, wide pore M-SBA-15 (M=Ti,Zr), mesoporous carbon and Carbon Nano Horns (CNHs) for hydrodenitrogenation (HDN) of Athabasca bitumen derived heavy gas oil (HGO). The high surface area, availability of a large variety of pore sizes, variable surface functional groups, easy metal recovery by the burning of the support, reduced coking propensity, and resistance to nitrogen poisoning are expected to increase the activity of the Ni-Mo catalysts. The use of these supports for NiMo hydrotreating catalyst will facilitate the removal of N and S atoms from the bulky molecules of heavy crude oil. This will help the participating industry, Syncrude Canada Ltd. to improve the quality of gas oil, which will meet specifications of downstream refining processes. This research also benefits Canada by efficient utilization of its vast oil resources.