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Resid Hydrocracking for Bottom of the Barrel Conversion

Sturgeon Refinery Northwest Partnership LC-FINING™ Resid Hydrocracker

Resid HydroCracking is quickly emerging as today’s hot refining technology to increase bottom of the barrel conversion. Although this process has been around for 50 years, it only recently gained popularity because of its ability to process heavier and diverse feedstocks and reduce sulfur content.  The Sturgeon Refinery shown in the cover image above commissioned their RHC in December 2018.  There are 25 active sites according to this infographic by MOGAS.

Ebullated Bed and Slurry Phase Resid HydroCrackers map
Ebullated and slurry bed hydrocracking

As a result of Residue Hydrocracking’s growing importance, Refining Community now offers the first worldwide conference and user’s group for any licensee to address this process.

For people wanting to learn more about the RHC, you participate in a ‘boots on the ground’ approach to operations, engineering, maintenance, inspection, and design. You’ll openly discuss issues and solutions that are common across the various licensors and unit configurations.

For example, high-temperature fouling of heat exchangers and let-down valves are common across all types of RHC units. The best practices to predict, prevent, and maintain this equipment from fouling falls under the safety banner, because the less often we must interact with the equipment, the fewer opportunities for risk to personnel are expected. You’ll hear lots of other examples during the RefComm® Galveston Conference and Exhibition.

Whether you use Axens H-Oil, Chevron Lummus, ENI EST, Hebei Xinqiyuan Shanghai New-Unity, Shell HYCON, KBR VEBA or UOP Uniflex™MC™, or a custom process, we’ll seek common ground, where possible, so that solutions developed after more than 20 years of operating in an ebullated bed unit can be applied to a slurry-phase or fixed bed unit.


Resid Hydrocracking (RHC / RHU / RHDC) Resid Hydrocracking
10 Reasons to learn about Resid Hydrocracking 10 Reasons to learn about Resid Hydrocracking
RHU trademarks, licensors and acronymsRHU trademarks, licensors and acronyms
RefComm® Resid Hydrocracking user community © Creative Commons licenseResid Hydrocracking Community (User Group)
RefComm® Gdansk Resid HydroCracking ConferenceRefComm® Gdansk Resid HydroCracking Conference
Sturgeon Refinery Northwest Partnership CLG LC-Finer RHUSturgeon Refinery LC-FINER™
Axens H-Oil ebullated bed HydrocrackingAxens H-Oil Ebullated Bed Hydrocracking
BAPCO LC-FINING™ Resid HydroCracker project
BAPCO begins LC-FINING™ Resid HydroCracker project
LUKOIL commissions H-Oil Resid HydroCracker project at Burgas Refinery in BulgariaLUKOIL commissions H-Oil Resid HydroCracker project at Burgas Refinery in Bulgaria
Jordan Refinery to get KBR VCC slurry phase resid hydrocrackerJordan Refinery to get KBR VCC slurry phase resid hydrocracker

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Posted by: Paul R Orlowski

Paul Orlowski is General Manager for the Refining Community which includes Coking.com, CatCracking.com, SulfurUnit.com, Resid Hydrocracking and SDA. They consult at refineries around the world. They've hosted 36 technical conferences around the globe, trained 1,000's and completed very beneficial consulting and troubleshooting projects. Paul co-founded Coking.com Inc in 1998 with Gary Pitman. Evan Hyde later joined the team. Besides being an educator and software applications engineer, he worked 18 years at ARCO and BP refineries near Seattle, WA USA. Previously he worked for Science Applications International Corporation and Dealer Information Systems. In 2019 look for #RefComm Galveston Coking | CatCracking | Resid Hydrocracking and RefComm® Rotterdam Coking | CatCracking. In 2020 Galveston; Gdansk, Poland and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Singapore.

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