PTQ Q2 2025 Issue

contain less low-octane/high RVP C 5 s, which allows more butane blending to gasoline. While butane is cheap and high octane, it is also paraffinic, so ethanol octane synergy applies to every additional butane barrel. If an alternate hydrogen supply is available, a reduced reformer rate and/ or severity is very attractive. • Full FCC gasoline desulphurisation can be implemented to remove virtually all sulphur from refinery gasoline. If a refinery is relying on purchasing sulphur credits, this can turn a buyer of sulphur credits into a seller. If a refinery is practising olefin retention (by desulphurising the heavy FCC naphtha but not treating the light FCC naphtha), HRC technology provides a surprisingly better solution: desulphurise both light and the heavy FCC naphtha (wip - ing out the olefins in both). Then both FCC gasolines can blend into the HRC gasoline, taking advantage of ethanol octane synergy. The resulting octane of the FCC gasolines, coupled with the ethanol octane synergy, is higher than the FCC gasoline combined octane when practising ole- fin retention. Plus, the refiner becomes a seller of sulphur credits. • Full HRC implementation will result in reformer shutdown. All reformer feed can then be blended to HRC gasoline directly. Or even better, the reformer can be revamped to a recycle isomerisation unit. A recycle isomerisation unit can produce an ‘alkylate-like’ 91-octane paraffinic blendstock from a 70-octane feedstock. The run length of an isom - erisation operation can be four years vs 6-12 months for many reformers. The liquid yield loss of the isomerisation unit is small compared to 20% for the reformer. Of course, a reliable alternate hydrogen supply must be provided for this situation. The economics of these cases can be very attractive, easily justifying the capital required. • Alternatively, there are options for reformer operation with full HRC implementation. They involve the sale of high-octane reformate or as a feedstock for benzene, tol- uene and xylene (BTX) extraction and chemical sale. In the latter case, the raffinate stream is an excellent feedstock to add to HRC gasoline. John Burger is President of HRC Fuels, and the President and Founder of Finding the Second Right Answer LLC, a consulting company focused on helping refiners repurpose existing assets more economi - cally. He has more than 40 years of experience working in the refining industry and was part of the ARCO team that invented reformulated gasoline. He is the author of US Patent 11,434,441 B2, ‘Blended gaso - line composition’, which is the foundation of HRC gasoline technology. He is also a co-author of a similar US Patent 10,883,061 B3, ‘Aviation gasoline compositions.’ Email: John.Burger@hrcfuels.com Don Byrne is Vice President of HRC Fuels. He has 32 years of experi - ence in the refining industry, working in research and development, as a refinery lab manager, area superintendent, area operations manager, major capital projects manager, and Management safety consultant. Email: Don.Byrne@hrcfuels.com George Hoekstra is the President of Hoekstra Trading LLC, which sponsors multi-client research projects in refining technology, cata - lysts, and fuels economics, including the industry’s only standardised multi-client catalyst testing programme. He has worked for 35 years in refinery process research, fuels and lubricants technologies, eco - nomics. and marketing. Email: George.Hoekstra@hoekstratrading.com