Abstract: To achieve efficient utilization of shale oil, nitrogenous compounds and other impurities in shale oil were removed by hydrotreating. The catalytic cracking of hydrotreated shale oil was investigated by using a small-scale fixed fluidized bed (FFB) unit. The effects of catalyst and reaction severity were studied by using SCG catalyst enriched with Y molecular sieves and DCC catalyst enriched with ZRP-type molecular sieves, respectively. The experimental results showed that catalytic cracking of hydrotreated shale oil, with nitrogen removal of 99.74%, achieved a high conversion rate ranging from 79% to 85%. The yield of liquid product was also high, ranging from 89% to 94%. The highest yield of gasoline was achieved by using the SCG catalyst, with the yield of 51.77% and research octane number(RON) of over 90 at a reaction temperature of 500 ℃ and a catalyst/oil mass ratio of 6. The data indicated that an increase in the conversion rate of hydrotreated shale oil resulted a linear decrease of gasoline yield. Furthemore, the utilization of the DCC catalyst led to higher yields of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and light olefins (ethylene + propylene + butene), reaching up to 41.62% and 32.90%, respectively,at a reaction temperature of 560 ℃ and a catalyst/oil mass ratio of 10.3. The LPG and light olefins yield increased significantly with the increase of conversion. The olefin content of gasoline decreased linearly with the increase of conversion on both catalysts, while the RON increased linearly. The two processing schemes for producing more gasoline and LPG from the cracking of hydrotreated shale oil were designed.

Key words: shale oil, hydro-upgrading, catalytic cracking, catalyst, gasoline, LPG