Visbreaking of fuel oil in mixture with pistachio wood biomass

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Abstract

Visbreaking of fuel oil is one of the most economically justified and technologically flexible processes of thermal conversion of heavy petroleum residues formed during the primary distillation of crude oil. In recent years, special attention has been paid to developing methods for increasing the conversion depth and improving the environmental characteristics of process products. One of the promising directions for visbreaking intensification is the use of organic additives capable of influencing the radical mechanisms of thermal destruction and stabilizing the resulting intermediate products. In the present work, the effect of adding pistachio wood biomass (in the form of sawdust) on the technological parameters and product composition of the fuel oil visbreaking process was investigated. It was established that the co-thermal treatment of fuel oil with 10 wt. % pistachio wood sawdust leads to a deeper conversion of the heavy fraction: the amount of residue with a boiling point above 350 oC decreases by approximately 8–9 wt. %, while the total yield of distillate fractions boiling below 350 oC increases by about 8 wt. %. At the same time, a moderate increase in the yield of the gaseous phase (up to 6.8 wt. %) and the solid (coke) phase (~0.75 wt. %) is observed, accompanied by a slight decrease in the liquid yield, which indicates that an acceptable material balance of the process is maintained. The gaseous phase formed during the modified visbreaking process shows an improved composition: the hydrogen content increases (up to 12 vol. %), while the concentrations of CO and CO₂ rise (≈4 vol. % each), and H₂S decreases to 0.3–0.4 vol. %. These changes indicate the occurrence of dehydrogenation and desulfurization reactions involving the oxygen-containing components of the bio-additive, which contribute to the improvement of the ecological characteristics of the gaseous products. The effect was confirmed in repeated experiments, demonstrating the stability and reproducibility of the observed phenomenon. The obtained results show that pistachio wood biomass can be effectively used as a natural modifier of the fuel oil visbreaking process, contributing both to the increased depth of conversion and to the improvement of the environmental properties of the produced gases. A comparative analysis of the physicochemical properties of the heavy fraction (>350 oC) obtained from the processing of the original fuel oil and its mixture with 10 wt. % pistachio wood sawdust revealed that, according to key operational indicators, this fraction meets the requirements for boiler fuels regulated by GOST 10585–2013. This confirms the prospects of using plant-derived biomass as an environmentally safe and readily available reagent for intensifying the thermal conversion of heavy petroleum residues.

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