Hydrocracking process

Without a cracking section, long-chain and cyclic hydrocarbons cannot have their chains broken or rings opened to form hydrocarbons with lower molecular weights, making it impossible to obtain the target products in the appropriate mass and quantity.

You first need to figure out what hydrocarbon compositions make up the base oil suitable for lubricants! If following the conventional lubricant process, it basically relies on the old methods; the current process route is much more rational and efficient!

What if my target product is heavy-duty lubricant? I use distillate oil with a reduced boiling point as raw material to produce 10cst lubricant base oil; of course, the higher the yield of heavy-duty lubricants, the better! Does a higher yield of heavy lubricating oil after the hydrogenation stage mean that the yield of the product is also higher under the same isomerization conditions?

I see; if there is no cracking section, what is affected by ring-opening? As a result, the viscosity index of the oil product will be low!

At present, in the vast majority of refineries around the world, the production of lubricant base oils still relies on processing techniques based on physical separation methods such as solvent refining and solvent dewaxing. This is indeed an economical and effective approach for refineries that can obtain paraffin-based raw materials in a stable manner over the long term. As a result, this method has continued to be widely used to this day. With the increasing shortage of paraffin-based crude oil resources worldwide, the growing demand for high-quality base oils, the development of hydrogen production technologies, and increasingly stringent environmental regulations, processes for producing high-quality lubricant base oils have emerged since the 1950s and have continued to be improved. After the successful development of the hydrocatytic reforming process for producing lubricants in the 1960s (with the hydrocracking units developed by Gulf Oil Company and the lubricant hydrogenation units developed by the French Petroleum Institute coming online in 1969), several major foreign oil companies developed their own lubricant hydrogenation technologies, which were later put into industrial use. In addition, companies such as SHELL, CHEVRON, and MOBIL developed technologies for producing lubricants with extremely high viscosity indices through paraffin isomerization. The systematic development and industrialization of the hydrocatytic reforming process for lubricants have provided the technical foundation for manufacturing high-quality lubricant base oils, marking a shift in modern lubricant production processes from traditional physical treatment methods to chemical modification methods. This signifies that the lubricant industry is entering a new era. This article introduces the hydrogenation-based production processes for lubricant base oils as well as the technological advancements in this field. Authors: Yang Ke, Zhao Yuanjie. I don’t understand your manufacturing process.

Isomerization is an effective way to improve the viscosity index

Lubricating oils have requirements regarding their boiling range, which in turn relates to the size of their molecules. Some of the molecules in crude oil are much larger than what is needed; these are what are known as heavy oils. Without cracking, such molecules cannot be used, and cracking is the process of breaking down large molecular crude oil into smaller molecules. To increase the yield of lubricating oil, without cracking, the yield of lubricating oil is estimated to be at least 40% lower

Cracking increases the viscosity index of the feedstock; if there is only a refining stage, a high viscosity index of the feedstock is sufficient.