The decreasing demand for heavy fuel oils and the continuous depletion of fossil oil reserve has forced refiners to seek ways to convert heavier hydrocarbon feedstocks to lighter products of more value. Nowadays, many refineries have adopted hydrocracking to enhance mid-distillate production from heavy oil, while the performance of the hydrocracking heavy depends on the catalyst performance. In addition, sulfur reduction in diesel fuel is one of the most impressive changes within this industry over the past 30 years. From now on, the refining community must balance not just diesel fuel quality but also significant market demand changes. To reach this target, more robust catalyst systems are demanded. Oxford Catalysts Group (OCG) has developed a unique process to design and prepare hydrocracking and hydrodesulfurization catalysts. The OCG hydrocracking and ultra deep HDS catalysts have been successfully demonstrated in industrial pilot plant, and proved to be very active and stable in thousand hour operation. This technology is based on the catalyst design to adjust the cluster size of sulphur-carbide in the supported catalyst and adjustment of the interaction of the active components and the support. This paper describes the fundamental principle of the catalyst design and preparation, discusses the case study results with various feedstocks and operation conditions.
