Deasphalting

Solvent deasphalting pilot plant services.

Solvent deasphalting is a refinery process for extracting asphaltenes and resins from heavy vacuum gas oil, atmospheric residue or vacuum residue to produce valuable, deasphalted oil that otherwise can not be recovered from the residue by conventional distillation. The deasphalted oil can be used to make lubricants or as feed to the fluid catalytic cracker or the hydrocracker. Solvent selection and operating conditions are dictated by the desired product yields and qualities.

The process consists of contacting the feedstock with a solvent in a countercurrent extractor at temperatures and pressures to precipitate the asphaltene and resin fractions that are not soluble in the solvent. Paraffins on the other hand are soluble in the solvent at lower temperatures, but their solubility decreases with increasing temperature. Deasphalted oil quality at a constant yield can be increased by increasing temperature and solvent-to-feed ratio.

The Intertek PARC pilot plant facility has a counter-current deasphalting pilot plant that consists of a 28’ column containing 161 alternating baffles spaced 2”apart. The feed rate can be adjusted between typically 1.0 to 2.0 gph; temperatures can be increased to 500 F and pressures up to 600 psig.  Recycled light hydrocarbon solvents include C3, C4 and C5 or mixtures.   

Contact us to see how Intertek can help your organization with Deasphalting.