In-Situ Reaction Monitoring and Characterization Using Light Scattering Techniques

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Heavy oil is upgrading is a worldwide issue with major producers in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Canada. Canada is a world leader in this area and companies from around the world look to Alberta for it's long experience. All of this heavy oil requires upgrading before it can be used in conventional refineries. Expanding Canada's upgrading capacity is a major issue to add value to a major product. The large capital cost of new refineries has limited expansion of our upgrading capacity. Unfortunately, there has been very little innovation in upgrading, mainly due to the complexity of the feeds and difficult reaction conditions. My research program is the development of new tools, techniques, and understanding to improve the chemical processing of the complex systems that are often found in the processing of heavy oils, renewable fuels and catalytic systems. Deeper understanding of the reactions that transform heavy oil to products will open new pathways for commercial technologies. Ultimately, the goal is to continue to develop techniques that can be used with industrial scale reactors for on-line control and optimization. In the case of heavy oil upgrading, the objective of this work is to generate tools to determine the rate of chemical changes that occur during very early stages of reactions and to quantify anisotropic mesophase and isotropic coke formation using light scattering of suspended sub-micron particles in the feed oil and their changes during thermal cracking and hydrogenation reactions. This research would provide a rapid and quantitative in-situ approach to gauge the dynamics of coke formation in these processes. To achieve this goal, the main focus will involve improved microreacotrs for in-situ observations of reacting phenomena, the development of a method of quantification of sub-micron reacting domains that are common in petroleum systems, the development of in-situ Raman spectroscopy techniques for the tracking of chemical composition and catalyst state (for homogeneous catalysts), and the real-time analysis of sub-micron particle distributions during reactions. The worldwide supplies of oil are slowly getting heavier and more difficult to process. Canada has a clear advantage in that we have experience of working with these oils for generations; companies from around the world look to Canada for expertise in understanding how to handle these difficult feeds. The Canadian led generation of new tools to analyze and characterize these highly complex systems will help expand the recognition of Canadian research around the world. Tools that couple the study of kinetics, mass transfer and chemistry will yield detailed phenomenological models of the process that will allow for the testing of new processing options that produce maximum yields with improved product quality and are environmentally sustainable.