Review

The reason for this investigation into the partial oxidation (POX) of high-boiling hydrocarbons with oxygen in the presence of water vapour was to ensure increased demand on hydrogen, which is essential for the deeper hydrorefining of petroleum oils to ensure better quality of motor fuels. The tests demonstrated the good performance of the pilot plant unit and also the reproducibility of the experiment. The investigation detected a significant impact of water vapour on the selectivity of the partial oxidation of high boiling-point hydrocarbons with regard to the composition of the exhaust gas. In addition, it was noted that the hydrogen content in the reaction product of the partial oxidation of the mixture of visbreaking distillate and residue diluted with pyrolysis fuel oil, achieved 50 %. The content of components in the gaseous product accorded well with a synthesis gas composition produced by the plant unit of the UNIPETROL RPA Co., designed and built under licence from the Shell Petroleum Co.