Hydrodemetallization of heavy oil: Recent progress, challenge, and future prospects

Heavy oil contains significant amounts of metals with vanadium and nickel being the most common. These metals are one of the main reasons for the deactivation of catalyst, corrosion of equipment during upgrading process. This review presents discussions of hydrodemetallization in heavy oil upgrading. The most current model for molecular structures and removal mechanisms were summarized. In addition, the effects of four determined factors including reaction temperature, liquid hourly space velocity, hydrogen pressure and catalyst on hydrodemetallization efficiency of heavy oil were discussed in details. Moreover, the advantages and disadvantages of three most common hydrodemetallization technologies that are fixed-bed, moving bed, E-bed and the slurry bed were also examined.