Using Chemistry-oriented Lumping to Model Heavy Oil Hydroprocessing

Building on the principles of structure-oriented lumping (SOL), chemistry-oriented lumping methods have been developed to describe the composition in tandem with the hydro-processing chemistry of heavy oils such as vacuum residue, de-asphalted oil, tar and bitumen. Recent advances in analytical chemistry have provided the necessary fundamental insights that are required to develop such models. While all aspects of the original SOL modeling approach are applicable to heavy oil; a much higher degree of lumping as well as additional strategies to keep the number of components in the kinetic model manageable are required. Chemistry-oriented lumping methods are used to define a practicable model of heavy oil composition that is chemistry consistent.