Upgrading gasoline yield and octane quality in fluid catalytic cracking by coprocessing of vacuum gasoil with palm triglyceride fatty acid using REY-type zeolite catalysts

Gasoline fuel produced by fluid catalytic cracking unit is mostly influenced by characteristics of catalyst used and process condition, eventhough feed nature determines the product’s yield and quality. Coprocessing of vacuum gasoil (VGO) with palm triglyceride fatty acid has been performed experimentally using fluid-bed reactor of ACE unit over equilibrium catalyst of single REY-type zeolite at reaction temperature 530^oC and catalyst-oil ratio of 5.5 g/g. Three kind of cracking feeds were tested and evaluated including neat VGO, mixture of VGO with 0-15% refined bleached deodorized palm oil (RBDPO) and VGO mixed with 0-15% of RBDPO and palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD) at ratio 9:1. It was found that cracking feeds containing palm triglyceride fatty acid influenced significantly the product yield and conversion. The change of gasoline yield from 42.9 to 48.3% and octane number from 92.4 to 97.7 was found from coprocessing of VGO with 5% RBDPO-PFAD. The role of palm triglyceride fatty acid along with VGO feed was suppossed to be dominantly in strengthening the cracking ability as indicated by increase of strong acid sites of catalyst from action of hydrogen transfer reaction. The special nature of feeds prepared by mixture of vacuum gasoil with a few palm triglyceride fatty acids would be good potentials of alternative route to upgrade gasoline in fluid catalytic cracking process.