Fkit: Official Opening of the Laboratory for Petroleum and Petrochemical Process Engineering

Laboratory for Petroleum and Petrochemical Process Engineering was established as a part of the Petroleum and Petrochemical Department at the Faculty of Chemical engineering and Technology and it was officially opened on July 4, 2011, within the AMACIZ scientific colloquium. The Laboratory was founded with the goal of enabling the research and development of processes treating and refining petroleum fractions and in this way create new opportunities for students for direct and practical training for the work in the petroleum refining industry. Laboratory is used for conducting research and development of separation and catalytic processes and it includes adequate experimental and analytical equipment. Separation processes that are being researched are adsorption and extraction as desulfurization processes for attaining fuels with improved properties in regard to the stringent sulfur content regulations. Laboratory is equipped with four apparatuses for conducting adsorption and extraction experiments in batch and column adsrbers and extractors, respectively. Catalytic conversion experiments are being conducted in an apparatus with fixed bed column reactor and in the presence of hydrogen or some other gas. The experiments can be carried out at temperatures between 25 and 400 °C and pressures between 1 and 40 bars with flow rates for the feed between 0,01 do 10,00 cm min and for the hydrogen up to 2000 cm min. Laboratory analytical equipment comprises three devices including a gas chromatgraph with flame ionization detector and ZB-1 capillary column for the analysis of hydrocarbons with 1 to 12 C atoms, a wave dispersive x-ray fluorescent spectrometer for elementary analysis of organic liquids and a UV-VIS spectrometer. Petroleum and Petrochemical Process Engineering Laboratory was established as a part of the Petroleum and Petrochemical Department at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Technology with the aim of conducting research and development of advanced and environmentally friendly petroleum refining and treatment processes which are used to attain petroleum and petrochemical products with improved physical and chemical properties. The formation and equipping of the Laboratory was a gradual process that went on in the period from April, 2008 to November, 2010 when the last piece of equipment was installed. It was officially opened on July 4, 2011, within the AMACIZ scientific colloquium. The Laboratory was established with the help from the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Technology and from several other financial sources including the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports, through scientific project titled “Advanced processes of hydrocarbon fuels desulfurization” and capital equipment tender, as well as INA – Industrija nafte d.d., through collaboration on projects titled “Desulfurization of FCC gasoline by liquid extraction” and “Optimization of light gasoline isomerization”. OBAVIJESTI I PRIOPĆENJA goriva i maziva, 50, 3 : 266-282, 2011. 275 The research in the Laboratory is being carried out on separation and catalytic conversion processes and it comprises analytical equipment. Separation processes include adsorption and liquid-liquid extraction which are being applied for removing organic sulfur compounds from petroleum fractions i.e. they are being used as adsorptive and extractive desulfurization processes. Catalytic conversion process that is being investigated is isomerization of light n-alkanes which produces isomers with much higher octane number values. The research of these processes is being conducted on laboratory apparatuses which were conceived and designed at the Petroleum and Petrochemistry Department and built in cooperation with Lab Air Media d.o.o. company from Sisak. During the time it took to complete the Laboratory the research that was carried out resulted with one completed Ph.D. thesis and the work on three more is ongoing. Also, 8 scientific papers were published in journals indexed in Current