ExxonMobil Catalysts and Licensing LLC, a company of ExxonMobil Corp. (Irving, Tex.; www.exxonmobil.com) announced an agreement with Sinochem Hongrun Petrochemical Co. Limited, to license ExxonMobil’s Flexicoking Technology to build a resid upgrading unit at Sinochem Hongrun’s High-End Chemical Park located in Binhai Economic-Technological Development Area, Weifang City, Shandong Province, People’s Republic of China.
This grassroots unit will process about 1.2 million metric tons per year (m.t./yr) of vacuum residue feedstock and enable Sinochem Hongrun to produce high-quality liquid products including clean transportation fuels and chemical feedstocks as well as clean-burning fuel gas. The project is currently in the engineering design phase and targeted for start-up in 2020.
“ExxonMobil’s Flexicoking technology offers greater flexibility than conventional delayed coking,” said Chris Birdsall, president of ExxonMobil Catalysts and Licensing LLC. “The application of Flexicoking technology will help the Sinochem Hongrun refinery optimize resid upgrading by minimizing capital investment and energy consumption.”
ExxonMobil’s Flexicoking technology is a continuous fluid-bed technology that thermally converts heavy oils – such as vacuum resid, oil sands bitumen, deasphalter bottoms and FCC bottoms – to lighter, more valuable products. By integrating fluid coking with air-steam gasification, Flexicoking technology is said to substantially eliminate petroleum coke production while providing a clean fuel gas.