PETROLEUM SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

, VOL. , NO. , –

http://dx.doi.org/./..

Heavy oil upgrading: Unlocking the future fuel supply

Ayhan Demirbasa , Abdullah Bafaila , and Abdul-Sattar Nizamib
a
Faculty of Engineering, Department of Industrial Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; b Center
of Excellence in Environmental Studies (CEES), King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Currently, more than half of the oil reserves (53.3%) in the world are in the Catalytic pyrolysis; cracking;
form of restorable oils such as heavy oil, extra heavy oil, oil sand, tar sands, oil heavy oil; hydrocracking;
unconventional oil
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shale, and bitumen. Heavy oil is one of the petroleum oil varieties that con-
tain long chain hydrocarbons. All types of heavy oils contain asphaltenes and
thus are considered very dense substances. The asphaltenes are one of the
most complex and heavy organic compounds present in the heavy oil. The
heavy oil is defined as one having an American Petroleum Institute scale index
equal or smaller than 20°. In conventional refining procedures, heavy oil poses
many challenges. Recycling and re-refining are applied techniques for the pro-
cessing of petroleum based heavy oils into reusable light oils such as gaso-
line and diesel fuel. In this regard, catalytic pyrolysis and thermal cracking are
promising technologies for light oil production. The authors review the heavy
oil upgrading processes and their associated challenges with ambition to find
cost-effective ways to ensure a constant future fuel supply.

1. Introduction
The economic development driven by the dramatic population, urbanization, and industrial growth
recorded in recent years has increased the demand of world oil supply. Most of this supply is met in the
form of light crude oil. Therefore, the world’s supply of light crude oil is depleting constantly and conse-
quently the demand of transportation fuels such as gasoline has increased (Saka and Demirbas, 2015).
The stock of heavy oil and petroleum fractions residue have gained significant attention in recent years
to bridge the ever increasing fuel demand-supply gap for petrochemical feeds and transportation fuels
(Aslan, 2015). Moreover, the rapidly rise in fuel prices and increasingly stringent environmental regula-
tions have diverted attention towards heavy oil upgrading in order to find cost-effective ways to ensure
a constant future fuel supply. The oil-like sludge fuel processing technology provides a new method for
the environmentally safe disposal of oil-like sludge and fuel production (Xu et al., 2009).
Crude oil is considered heavy because of long chain hydrocarbons or considered light with the pres-
ence of short chain hydrocarbons. According to American Petroleum Institute (API) scale (index that
is based on the oil specific gravity), API gravity of 34 or higher for any oil shows that the oil is light oil.
While, API gravity from 31 to 33 shows medium nature oil and 30 or below confirms that the oil is heavy
oil. Generally the higher the API gravity is, the more valuable the crude is. The long chain hydrocarbons
of heavy oils contain high molecular weight and elevated levels of heterogeneous compounds such as
sulfur (S), nitrogen (N), oxygen (O2 ), and metals (Speight, 1991). There are more than 15 carbon atoms
in the chain of molecules present in heavy oil that adds extra complexity and finance ultimately to the
refining process (Trevisan et al., 2006).

CONTACT Ayhan Demirbas ayhandemirbas@hotmail.com Faculty of Engineering, Department of Industrial Engineering, King
Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/lpet.
©  Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
 304 A. DEMIRBAS ET AL.

Table . Total world oil reserves.

Reserve Percent of total

Conventional oil .

Oil sands/bitumen .
Heavy oil .
Recoverable oils .

Heavy oil or extra heavy oil has high viscosity and don’t flow easily to production wells under normal
conditions. The heavy oil is heavy because of higher density or specific gravity in comparison to light
crude oil. Therefore, the whole production chain of heavy oil from its extraction to transportation and
finally to refining poses more challenges. However, there are huge differences from field to field for heavy
oil deposits. Similarly, the recovery methods also vary from well to well. Nonetheless, there is an array
of different results even from the same well after production begins.
Currently, more than half of the world’s oil reserves (53.3%) are in the form of restorable oils such as
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heavy oil, extra heavy oil, oil sand, tar sands, oil shale, and bitumen. However, there are many challenges
to recover and utilize these oil sources using conventional refineries. Therefore, we review the heavy oil
upgrading processes and their associated challenges with ambition to find cost effective tools to ensure
a constant future fuel supply. Table 1 shows total world oil reserves.

2. Asphaltenes
Asphaltenes are present in most of the petroleum fluids and in all heavy oils and bitumens from oil
sands. Asphaltenes in crude oil are the most complex, highest molecular weight (approximately 1000–
2,000,000) and heavy organic compounds (Speight, 1999, 2001; Speight and Ozum, 2002; Behrens, 2013).
The values of density, atomic H/C ratio and solubility parameter at ambient condition are 1.1–1.20
g/mL, and 1.0–1.2 and 19–24 MPa respectively (Hirschberg et al., 1984; Wiehe, 1996; Spiecker et al.,
2003; Speight, 2007). They have structurally condensed polynuclear aromatic rings mainly with chains
of alkyl side. The number of these rings differs from 6 to 15 in asphaltenes. The heterogeneous elements
in asphaltenes are O2 (0.3–5%), S (0.3–10%), N (0.6–3%), vanadium (V), and nickel (Ni) (Lichaa, 1977;
Suziki et al., 1982).
The hydrocarbons of asphaltenes contain different components such as condensed aromatic hydro-
carbons, hetero-aromatic compounds, bi- or polyfunctional molecules (e.g., ketones, amides, phenols,
carboxylic acids) and metals (e.g., Ni and V) complex compounds (Demirbas, 2002). They are gener-
ally characterized based on their solubility in alkanes such as pentane and heptanes. Moreover, they
tend to make clusters and precipitate that cause fouling in process equipment (Garcia-Hernandez, 1989;
Mousavi-Dehghani et al., 2004). They can be obtained from five different sources such as crude oil,
asphaltite, oil shale, tar sand and bituminous coal (Demirbas, 2000, 2002). The syncrude or synfuel are
petroleum-like materials and gaining attention nowadays due to depletion of conventional petroleum
sources. According to Demirbas (2002), processing oil shales and tar sand can produce different types of
syncrude.

3. Classification of heavy oil

There are various unconventional oil resources such as heavy oil, extra heavy oil, oil sand, tar sands,
oil shale, and bitumen. As these resources have some similar key features, therefore confusion arises
in giving them a common classification. The general oil classification is based on the flow easiness of
crude oil and thus reflect their technical characteristics from production to transportation and finally to
refining process. The available technological advancement and involved cost are also main criteria for
oil classification, used by many oil companies and governmental agencies. However, these criteria have
limited applications as they display special and temporal variations. The criteria of oil properties such
 PETROLEUM SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 305

Table . Classification of oils.

Viscosity of oil (measured in °API)

Conventional oils
Light crude >.
Medium oil .–.
Heavy oil <.
Deep sea oil above  m water depth —
Nonconventional oils
Extra heavy oil below (including tar sands) <
Oil shale —
Deep sea oil below  m water depth —
Polar oil —
Condensate —
Natural gas liquids (NGL) —
Synthetic crude oil (SCO) —
Bitumen from tar sands —
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as density and viscosity are often adopted at refineries and oil fields level to classify the oil (Santos et al.,
2015). The classification of oils is given in Table 2.
The API gravity scale is also used as the criterion for oil classification (Demirbas et al., 2015). How-
ever, the API degree range has not been standardized yet for defining and classifying oils. For example,
according to the World Petroleum Conference the heavy oil is defined having API range below 22.3°.
While, the defined API degree for heavy oil according to API is equal or smaller than 20°. Moreover, the
North American taxation system uses the oil classification criterion (Trevisan et al., 2006).

4. Heavy oil upgrading processes

As said previouly that the world’s supply of light crude oil is depleting and as a result the transporta-
tion fuels demand including gasoline has significantly increased. Therefore, the sources of heavy oil and
petroleum fractions residue are gaining special attention for keeping the constant future fuel supply (San-
tos et al., 2014). The oily sludge fuel processing technology provides a new route for the environmental
disposal and utilization of oily sludge as a fuel source (Xu et al., 2009). A new combined process of atmo-
spheric flash evaporation with solvent deasphalting was initiated as a way forward for oily sludge treat-
ment. According to Ning et al. (2015), the optimum operating conditions of solvent deasphalting process
were recorded at isopentane solvent, temperature (175°C), pressure (3.7 MPa), and solvent volume ratio
(5.0).
The critical materials from petroleum processing and refining industry are heavy oils and asphalt.
They have different applications in petroleum industry due to inherent differences in structure and com-
position. For example, the structure and composition of paving asphalt dictates its properties (Shui et al.,
1997). A large fraction of oily sludge is produced from the refineries during the crude oil refining. This
sludge contains benzenes, phenols, anthracenes, pyrenes, and other smelly and toxic substances that are
legally classified as hazardous waste. Moreover, the sludge results in environmental pollution when dis-
charged untreated into the environment (Hou et al., 2013).
The hydrocarbons, heterocyclic and polyaromatic and organometallic compounds such as porphyrins
are the larger molecular weight components with complex organic chemical structures present in heavy
crude oil (Bhatia and Sharma, 2006). Viscosity of heavy oils is a critical characteristic parameter in
designing of any potential optimized oil recovery process (Raut et al., 2013). Recycling and re-refining
are the application processes for converting petroleum based heavy products into light products such
as gasoline and diesel fuel. In this regard, pyrolysis, cracking and hydrocracking processes are consid-
ered appropriate and promising. According to Meng et al. (2006), the catalytic pyrolysis is an emerging
technology for the conversion of heavy oil into light olefins. A block diagram of heavy oil upgrading
processes is given in Figure 1
 306 A. DEMIRBAS ET AL.
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Figure . Block diagram of heavy oil upgrading processes.

The content of carbon (C) and hydrogen (H2 ) are more than 95% in most heavy crude oil (Lin, 2000).
Therefore, the small amount of nonhydrocarbon elements have little influence on the physical properties
of molecules, thus it is acceptable to ignore them in the distillation simulation of crude oil (Jiang et al.,
2013). According to Stratiev et al. (2015), heavy oils contain different fractions, which cannot be sepa-
rated at atmospheric distillation and remain as residue. Oil sand is also one of the unconventional oil
resources that has been found to be very useful in past few years (Li et al., 2011). According to Wu et al.
(2015), exploring extremely shallow oil sand in reservoirs of heavy oil is also an effective and economical
way. The conversion of heavy stock to lighter products is based on the thermal conversion reaction of
heavy oil e.g. delayed coking and breaking with cleavage. The thermal conversion mechanism becomes
complicated due to the complexity of heavy oil components (Xiao et al., 2002). The factors affecting the
heavy oil upgrading are catalyst management, heavy oil features, process design, and financial aspects
(Akhavan et al., 2014).
The process of heavy oil recovery using biological wastewater treatment method is based on the
microorganisms with high oil degrading capability, organic loads, process stability, resistance to shock
loading, minimum production of waste sludge byproducts, and using anaerobic and aerobic processes
(Kang, 2014). The two most common technologies for heavy oil upgrading are hydrocracking and ther-
mal cracking. Both technologies upgrade the heavy vacuum residues by breaking down the heavy com-
ponents into lighter compounds with more valuable hydrocarbon fractions. In hydrocracking, two ben-
eficial roles of water were considered. Water allows formation of highly crystalline metal oxides (smaller
particles) as being a high potential medium containing low dielectric constant and density at critical
point of 374°C, 22.1 MPa.
The upgrading of heavy oil depends on the variations in its properties and thus changes from oil field
to oil field. According to Demirbas et al. (2005), a facility can process whole heavy crude oils containing
API as low as 6. Such facility is consisting of atmospheric and vacuum distillation columns and a reaction
section, where unconverted bottoms are recycled into synthetic sour crude product. According to Nemli
(2015), the Feedstock Test Facility (FTF) has the capability to process 10–15 barrels of heavy oil per day
on a constant basis.
The technology is comparable to a fluidized catalytic cracking unit in a standard petroleum refin-
ery for upgrading the highly variable and low value petroleum without using catalyst. The chemistry
of catalytic cracking of heavy oils is fundamental and crucial in the development of advanced catalytic
cracking techniques (Gao and Xu, 1999). The catalyst technologies are constantly improving, as previ-
ously they were not suitable for upgrading heavy oil due to the large quantities of coking that inactivates
the catalysts. Moreover, the catalysts are expensive in comparison to common silica sand used in this
new process. This upgrading makes a syncrude, which can easily flow and contain less density and con-
tamination in the form of S and metals in comparison to the initial phase of heavy oil (Meng et al., 2006).
 PETROLEUM SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 307

For heavy oil upgrading, the FTF with a fluidized bed unit is a small facility considered as the tech-
nology center. The technological advantages of the fluid catalytic cracker (FCC) units are critical for FTF
comparable operations (Nemli, 2015), as they convert low value and heavy end refining byproducts to
high value petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel and kerosene. Therefore for today refinery, the
FCC units are the significant parts. Moreover, they access refiners to use most of the crude oil through
converting the high boiling point portion of the substrate into the boiling point range of specialized
fuels. This conversion also changes the refinery production parameters to produce more valuable prod-
ucts (Santos et al., 2014).

5. Conclusion
Crude oil, natural gas and heavy oil make the petroleum. Manufacturing plants that used to separate
oil into different fractions are grouped under biorefinery concept. The right combination of high boil-
ing point hydrocarbons such as asphaltenes gives heavy oil the properties of high density and viscosity.
Therefore, the asphaltenes is the main cause of the oil heaviness due to high molecular weight com-
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pounds. The most common technologies for upgrading of heavy oil are hydrocracking, thermal cracking,
and pyrolysis. The catalytic pyrolysis is a promising technology to obtain valuable fuels products from
the heavy oil. The factors affecting the heavy oil upgrading are catalyst management, heavy oil features,
process design, and financial aspects.

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