Catalytic Heavy Oil Upgrading under Methane Environment

The proposed research is focused on designing and optimizing novel catalysts that catalyze the activation of methane, the principal component of natural gas, to upgrade heavy oil, and obtaining a comprehensive understanding of the involved reaction mechanism. Heavy oil is upgraded to meet the pipeline transportation requirements, while methane is incorporated to the formed synthetic crude at lowered temperature and pressure (<5 MPa). Compared with commonly practiced hydrotreating process, which consumes hydrogen originating from the steam reforming of methane, the operating cost, energy consumption and CO2 emission are reduced in the proposed approach. On the other side, methane finds its way to be incorporated to the value added liquid products. The catalysts are metal modified nano porous materials, which allow flexible product selectivity by applying post-synthetic treatment to the support materials and modifying the condition of metal species. TO BE CONT'D

Faculty Supervisor:

Hua Song

Student:

Peng He

Partner:

Kara Energy Services

Discipline:

Engineering - chemical / biological

Sector:

Oil and gas

University:

Program: