In-Situ Reaction Monitoring and Characterization Using Light Scattering Techniques

重油升级是一个全球性问题，主要生产国包括俄罗斯、沙特阿拉伯、委内瑞拉和加拿大。 加拿大在这一领域处于世界领先地位，来自世界各地的公司都希望阿尔伯塔拥有长期的经验。所有这些重油在用于传统炼油厂之前都需要升级。 扩大加拿大的升级能力是一个重大问题，以增加价值的一个主要产品。 新建炼油厂的巨大资本成本限制了我们升级能力的扩大。不幸的是，主要由于进料的复杂性和困难的反应条件，在升级方面几乎没有创新。我的研究计划是开发新的工具，技术和理解，以改善经常在重油，可再生燃料和催化系统的加工中发现的复杂系统的化学加工。深入了解将重油转化为产品的反应将为商业技术开辟新的途径。最终，目标是继续开发可用于工业规模反应器的在线控制和优化技术。在重油升级的情况下，这项工作的目的是生成工具，以确定在反应的非常早期阶段发生的化学变化的速率，并量化各向异性中间相和各向同性焦炭的形成，使用悬浮的亚微米颗粒在进料油中的光散射和它们在热裂解和加氢反应过程中的变化。这项研究将提供一个快速和定量的原位方法来衡量在这些过程中的焦炭形成的动态。为了实现这一目标，主要的重点将包括改进的微反应器，用于原位观察反应现象，开发石油系统中常见的亚微米反应域的定量方法，开发原位拉曼光谱技术，用于跟踪化学成分和催化剂状态（对于均相催化剂），以及反应过程中亚微米颗粒分布的实时分析。世界范围内的石油供应正慢慢变得越来越重，越来越难以加工。加拿大有一个明显的优势，因为我们有几代人使用这些油的经验;来自世界各地的公司都在寻找加拿大的专业知识，了解如何处理这些困难的饲料。加拿大领导的新一代分析和表征这些高度复杂系统的工具将有助于扩大加拿大研究在世界各地的认可。耦合动力学，传质和化学研究的工具将产生详细的过程的现象学模型，这将允许测试新的加工选择，产生最大的产量，提高产品质量，是环境可持续的。

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.