Abstract: To elucidate the influence of feedstock properties on the reaction performance in fixed-bed residue hydrotreating, five blended feedstocks comprising vacuum residues from different sources and catalytic cracking diesel were selected for fixed-bed hydrotreating experiments under identical catalyst grading and process conditions. Based on the feedstocks’ macroscopic properties combined with the aromatic carbon ratio, correlation analysis and model construction were conducted with the hydrotreating reaction rate constants. The results indicate that the macroscopic properties of the feedstock can effectively correlate with the difficulty of asphaltene hydroconversion, vanadium removal, and carbon residue reduction, but show lower correlation with other reactions. After introducing the aromatic carbon ratio, the correlation of the macro-micro hybrid model with the hydrodesulfurization reaction rate constant improved significantly; however, it did not enhance correlations with other hydroprocessing reactions. The sulfur-to-carbon-residue ratio is identified as the core factor affecting residue hydroprocessing performance. A higher sulfur content coupled with a lower carbon residue corresponds to better reaction performance of the residue feedstock.

Key words: residue hydrotreating, feedstock property, reaction kinetics, aromatic carbon ratio