Olga Ruban

“Do you understand what you’ve done?! Now, we have two options. Either we kill you or chuck the whole oil-refining industry!” This is how the industry’s major players reacted when they heard about the new technology developed two years ago by scientists at Novosibirsk’s G.K. Boreskov Catalysis Institute, part of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In contrast to the traditional multi-stage process, the Novosibirsk technique refines oil in only one stage. The process yields high-octane gasoline and high-quality diesel oil that meet even the tightened environmental regulations recently introduced in Europe. Most importantly, however, the production of excellent quality fuel using the new technology costs several times less than older methods.
The Catalysis Institute is no typical Russian academic establishment. Throughout its history, its scientists have only rarely pursued pure scientific curiosity. As a rule, they have been guided in their research by the needs of various industries. Virtually all developments at the Institute have found their buyers. The new, single-stage technology is no exception. At the Expert’s second Russian Innovation Competition, the know-how from Novosibirsk took the British Council prize. It is already in use at several companies.

The light fractions
The discovery from Siberia only involves the so-called “top,” the light fractions of crude oil that are refined into gas and diesel, and not fuel oil.
Using traditional refining technology, after initial distillation, the gasoline, kerosene, and diesel fractions are each further refined via separate processes. Thus, one method for refining the gasoline fraction into high-octane gas involves hydrotreatment (which removes sulfur and nitrogen), reforming, and alkylation. The diesel fraction is generally refined into what is referred to as “winter-grade diesel” in Russia and undergoes hydrotreatment and dewaxing.
For more than a hundred years of this technology, each fraction has been processed separately using separate catalysts. Platinum catalysts are used in reforming, cobalt-molybdenum catalysts in hydrotreatment, and platinum and palladium catalysts in dewaxing. There have been many attempts to shorten this long chain and optimize the process, but all innovators were hampered by a single pre-existing assumption. They believed it was impossible to refine several different fractions at the same time (meaning in one reactor with one catalyst).
The Novosibirsk scientists, however, proved them wrong.

The super catalyst
The new, single-stage method, when everything is processed at the same time, is called Binary Motor Fuel or BMF technology. It is very simple: after primary oil distillation, all light fractions are fed into one reactor block where the refining process takes place. Then, the resulting compound is directed into a dividing block where it is split into three final products, high-octane gasoline, winter diesel, and propane-butane. The last fraction yields a liquefied gas that can be used as both a household and automotive fuel.
The beauty of the new method lies in a unique catalyst that is loaded into a reactor. The idea of a catalyst that could process heavy and light fractions at the same time without the processes interfering with each other occurred to Gennady Yechevsky, Doctor of Chemistry and the Head of the Catalytic Hydrocarbon Transformation Laboratory. He assumed that if a catalyst’s structure were transformed in a special way, its active centers (the special areas of a catalyst where specific chemical reactions can take place) would occur with non-uniform density. In this case, diverse reactions, such as aromatization, alkylation, cracking, desulfurization, and isomerization, could take place at the same time on these active centers. The speed ratio of these reactions would allow all fractions to be processed in same amount of time, without clogging the active centers.
The entire lab group, a scientifically strong team with several promising developments for the oil-refining and petrochemical industry to its credit, got to work on the new technology. Together they invented an industrial synthesis technique for this elegant catalyst. The method for redistributing active centers in the volume of a catalyst constitutes a fundamental innovation, as the material scientist chose to use in the new process – high-silica zeolite – is nothing new.
The lab ran pilot trials of the new method in 2001, just one year after the discovery of the super catalyst idea. The first experimental industrial trials were already underway in August 2003. They proved Yechevsky’s theory.

Clean, cheap, and beautiful
Thanks to BMF technology, the oil refining process has becomes considerably simpler. It no longer involves complex and costly processes, such as hydrotreatment (and cumbersome and troublesome hydrogen facilities), reforming, isomerization, alkylation, dewaxing, and various rectification stages. Capital expenditures are six times less and operating costs are at least eight times less, compared to the traditional process. BMF technology also uses at least four times less energy.
The BMF catalyst– in contrast to the expensive and touchy noble metals used in the traditional process – is convenient in all respects: it is cheap, non-aggressive, and undemanding to boot.
There is one more essential advantage to the Novosibirsk technology: it can refine oil with absolutely any concentration of sulfur compounds. When refining “dirty” oil using traditional method, hydrotreatment costs increase dramatically. Sulfur has to be removed, as it rapidly destroys the catalysts used in the next refining stages. Therefore, oil refineries are not eager to accept oil with high sulfur content for further refinement, because costs are too high. Russia, however, has a large amount of high-sulfur oil.
The new zeolite catalyst isn’t afraid of sulfur at all. That’s why it doesn’t matter in BMF technology how much sulfur the raw crude contains. Gulping up “sour” crude with ease, the BMF method yields fuel with a sulfur content of less than 0.001% (whereas under Russian state standards, 0.05% is considered good).
Another advantage of BMF technology is the low benzol content of the resulting fuel. Benzol is carcinogenic when burned and Russian state standards set an upper limit of 5% for benzol concentration in fuel. The maximum benzol percentage under European standards is 1%. BMF technology produces fuel with a benzol content of less than 1%.
BMF technology also produces excellent winter diesel. Traditional diesel fuel is considered high-quality if it remains liquid at -35ºC. The Novosibirsk fuel doesn’t freeze even at -75ºC. If oil is refined using the traditional process, about 25% of the gasoline turns into a gas and is lost. BMF’s developers have outperformed the older method here, too. They have succeeded in achieving much higher liquid yield, the most valuable fraction. The maximum “gas losses” run less than 18%. However, even this 18% cannot really be called a loss. The propane-butane content of this gas is as high as 95%.
“A patent search has shown that there is other technology of this kind anywhere in the world. We already have four Russian and two international patents for a number of variations of BMF technology. Seven more patent applications for the innovations we made during our work are currently under consideration,” Yechevsky says.

Fueling ambitions
The BMF technology presents a radical break with existing oil refining processes. This, however, prevents BMF technology from be applied immediately industry-wide. It is not that simple to fit the new technology into the complex, multi-stage production cycle at oil refineries.
While waiting for a response from “big oil,” Catalysis Institute officials have focused on promoting their technology in more limited niches, where smaller oil refineries are being set up from scratch. These include plants in remote and hard-to-reach areas, in particular in the Far North. Building oil refineries using the Novosibirsk technology also proves economically sound when developing new oil deposits.
Secondly, the new technology is ideal for processing “problem” crude with large amounts of sulfur or paraffin. Plants bluntly refuse to accept some grades of this kind of oil, and in such cases there is simply no commercially viable alternative to BMF technology.
There is one more promising market. Using the new technology, it would be possible to process gas condensate efficiently, as the liquid fraction is separated from the gas produced in order to send only residue gas through the main pipeline. Gas condensate is an ideal input for BMF technology. It is a mixture of mainly light oil fractions, and its fuel oil content is very low.
The developers also hope to fuel the ambitions of regional politicians for promoting BMF technology. Officials in regions without their own oil refineries often want motor fuel production in their area to avoid price gauging at crucial moments like sowing and harvesting. Using BMF technology, they could build a compact and inexpensive oil refinery on a regional scale.

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