Russian scientists have assembled an installation that allows efficient processing of heavy oil.
Russian scientists have assembled an installation that allows using electric discharges to efficiently process heavy oil and at the same time obtain products used in the chemical industry.
Heavy oil reserves account for 70% of the world’s reserves. However, its processing is difficult due to its high density and viscosity, a large number of sulfur-containing compounds. Modern methods have a number of disadvantages: they require high temperatures and pressure, a large amount of hydrogen, as well as special equipment. At the same time, in order to heat and maintain high temperatures, it is necessary to burn significant amounts of hydrocarbon fuel, which leads to significant emissions of carbon dioxide.
This can be avoided if plasma reactors are used instead of high-temperature installations and furnaces. They do not require expensive catalysts and hydrogen, run on electricity from nuclear and hydroelectric power plants, and carbon dioxide is not released during their operation. Despite the advantages of such oil treatment, the introduction of this method into industry is limited by the small size of reactors.
Scientists from Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University have assembled an installation for plasma pyrolysis of oil. It consisted of a reactor, a control system and registration of electrical discharges, as well as a system for collecting the resulting gases. The reactor volume was 300 cubic centimeters, which is 7.5 times more than the previous models.
“In our future work, we will try to increase the depth of fuel oil processing, increase the productivity and profitability of plasma chemical pyrolysis. We also plan to investigate carbon nanostructures for their use as catalysts and adsorbents,” says Evgeny Titov, project manager, Candidate of Technical Sciences, leading researcher at NSTU.