Technology

Unionfining™is a hydrotreating process designed to remove objectionable materials such as sulfur, nitrogen, olefins and aromatics from petroleum distillates by selectively reacting these materials with hydrogen in a catalyst bed at elevated temperature.

The UOP MQD Unionfining™ process is a family of technologies that offers completely integrated solutions to upgrade difficult, refractory, distillate-range materials to high quality diesel. The technologies achieve customer stringent diesel product requirements for sulfur and aromatics content, cetane, and cold-flow properties.

The MQD Unionfining process uses either a single-stage or two-stage configuration. The single-stage design is used with most base-metal catalysts applications. The two-stage scheme is designed to achieve the highest quality diesel by using a noble-metal catalyst in the second stage.

The feed is exchanged with the reactor effluent, mixed with recycle hydrogen, and then heated to reaction temperature in a fired heater. The combined feed then flows through the reactor, which contains the catalyst that will accelerate the reaction. The reactor effluent is cooled in exchange with the feed and then in a series of coolers before being separated in a vapor-liquid separator. The vapor portion is recompressed, combined with fresh hydrogen, and returned to the reactor feed. The liquid portion is fed to a fractionator, where it is stripped of light ends, H₂S, and NH₃.

Sources

1. OilVips Blogspot, Sep 2011, Unionfining Technology
2. Hassan Balawi Blog, Hydrotreating Process
3. Honeywell UOP, Refining, Diesel & Jet