Abstract: The choice of processing route for vacuum residue affects the overall economy of refining enterprises. Usually, delayed coking, solvent deasphalting, fixed bed residue hydrotreating, ebullated bed hydrogenation and other single processing routes or their combination processing routes are adopted. A large-scale refining and petrochemical integration enterprise has repeatedly studied and compared the processing route of residue during the configuration design stage of its 2nd phase 20.0 Mt/a crude oil processing complex and determined to adopt the slurry bed hydrocracking route. The second phase of the project was successfully put into operation with high load. The advanced and reliable nature of slurry bed hydrocracking technology for processing deep cut vacuum residue has been verified by such industry application, reflecting the major progress of residue processing technology. By using the high adaptability of slurry bed residue hydrocracking to poor quality heavy inferior feedstock, it is proposed to further optimize the existing residue processing route with the combination of solvent deasphalting, fixed bed residue hydrotreating and slurry bed hydrocracking, which can achieve better economic benefits.

Key words: vacuum residue, processing route, slurry bed, fixed bed, hydrocracking, solvent deasphalting, delayed coking