ACID REMOVAL FROM CRUDE OILS BY CATALYTIC ESTERIFICA-TION NAPHTHENIC ACID CATALIZE BY Mg/Al HYDROTALCITE

NORMA AMADEO,; ML DIEUZEIDE; NICOLAS REDONDO

mexico

Congreso; International Symposium on Advances in Hydroprocessing of Oil Fractions- ISAHOF; 2019

The existence of high levels of naphthenic acids in crude oil causes serious corrosion problems at temperatures between 200ºC and 400ºC, which mainly affects pipes and primary distillation units [1]. The total acid number (TAN) is defined as the number of milligrams of KOH needed to neu-tralize 1 gram of oil. When the TAN is greater than 0.5, the oil is considered acidic and there-fore potentially corrosive to the refinery units. Consequently, crude oils with high TAN value are considered to be of poor quality and their market value is low. High TAN crude oils have been discovered and exploited in California, Venezuela, the North Sea, Canada, West Africa, India, China and Russia. The removal of naphthenic acids can be achieved by non-destructive methods, such as solvent extraction or adsorption [2,3]. On the other hand, esterification reaction is a promising alterna-tive, since a significant decrease in acidity could be achieved at temperatures below 150 ° C, especially when homogeneous catalysts are used. It is known that the homogeneous process occurs at a lower temperature than the heterogeneous one. However, the use of solid catalysts implies a double benefit. First, the formation of emulsions is avoided, and further complex steps are not necessary to remove the excess catalyst.The objective of this work is to develop a solid catalyst from LDH Mg/Al that is active at low temperatures in the esterification of 3-cyclopentyl propionic acid, representative of naphthenic acids. Another aim is to carry out the kinetic study of the esterification reaction is carried out in a batch stirred reactor with a solid catalyst in suspension by agitation (not shown).