Profiting from the lubricants market
Pursuing a profitable and more sustainable purpose for crude oil through the lubricants market requires examination of lubricants production via hydroprocessing
Marcio Wagner da Silva Process Engineer
F uel efficiency improvements and the expanding elec - tric vehicle (EV) market reduce transportation fuels demand and, consequently, global crude oil demand. Furthermore, new technologies like additive manufacturing (3D printing) have the potential to greatly impact overall transportation infrastructure requirements, further affect - ing transportation fuels demand. These trends, added to the onus on minimising the carbon intensity of the energetic matrix, reinforce the reduction in fossil fuels and complete a negative scenario for fossil fuels. On the other hand, non-energetic derivatives like petro - chemicals and lubricants present a growing consumer mar - ket and higher added value than fuels. According to trend analysts and recent forecasts, the lubricants market size was valued at US$165 billion in 2022, will grow by com - pound annual rates of around 3.0%, and can reach a total value of US$188 billion in 2027. Similar to other crude oil derivatives, economic and tech - nological developments have predicated the production of lubricating oils with higher quality and performance and lower contaminants content. The main quality require - ments for lubricating oils are viscosity, flash point, viscos - ity index (viscosity change with temperature), fluidity point, chemical stability, and volatility. According to the American Petroleum Institute (API), lubricating base oils can be classi - fied as described in Table 1 . Lube oils from Groups II, III, and IV have higher quality than base oils from Group I. The content of contaminants like sulphur and unsaturated compounds is significantly reduced; moreover, the viscosity index is superior for Groups II, III, and IV.
Lubricating base oils classification
Group Typical production process I Solvent extraction II
Hydrocracking/hydrotreating or hydrocracking + solvent extraction
III IV
Hydrocracking/hydrotreating
Synthetic
Table 1
Lubricant production routes The first step in the lubricant production process is vacuum distillation of atmospheric residue, such as bottoms prod - uct obtained in the atmospheric distillation processes. For vacuum distillation units dedicated to producing lubricat - ing fractions, fractionating needs better control than seen in units dedicated to producing gasoils-to-fuels conversion. The objective is to avoid thermal degradation and control the distillation curve of the side streams. A typical arrange - ment for the vacuum distillation unit is to produce a lubri - cating fraction, as shown in Figure 1 . A secondary vacuum distillation column is necessary when it is desired to separate the heavy neutral oil stream from the vacuum residue. In lubricants production units based on the solvent route, the following steps are basically physical separation pro - cesses. The objective is to remove from the process streams any components that can affect the desired properties of base oils, mainly the viscosity index and chemical stability. Figure 2 shows a block diagram with the corresponding process steps to produce base lubricating oils through the solvent extraction route.
To vacuum system
To vacuum system
Primary vacuum distillation column
Spindle oil
Secondary vacuum distillation column
Heavy neutral oil
Light neutral oil
Medium neutral oil
Atmospheric distillation residue
Vacuum residue
Primary red heater
Vacuum residue
Secondary red heater
Figure 1 Typical arrangement for vacuum distillation processing to lubricating oil production
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PTQ Q2 2023
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