Published December 2023
Refiners around the world have implemented changes to their plant unit configurations to meet the more stringent fuel specifications either through the addition of new process units, change of catalyst or installation of new equipment. To effectively lower the sulfur content in gasoline, many refiners have opted to further treat the cracked naphtha from the fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) unit as it is identified as the major sulfur contributor in the gasoline product pool.
Sulzer’s GT-BTX PluS extractive distillation technology extracts aromatics and sulfur compounds from cracked naphtha feed and rejects olefins and other components into the raffinate stream. By implementing this technology, the cracked naphtha hydrotreater processing capacity can be reduced to process only the extract and heavy cracked naphtha (HCN) instead of full range FCC naphtha. Octane loss from olefin saturations can also be minimized.
This Process Economics Program (PEP) review provides a comprehensive techno-economic assessment of the GT-BTX PluS technology. The production economic assessment presented in this review is based on a plant located in the United States Gulf Coast (USGC) region, with an annual production capacity of 3,057.4 million pounds a year (MMlb/yr) of gasoline. An interactive iPEP Navigator® module, which is an Excel-based computer costing tool developed by S&P Global Commodity Insights, is also attached with the electronic version of this review to allow quick calculation of the process economics in other major regions of the world.
The technological and economic assessments of the GT-BTX PluS process are PEP’s independent interpretation of the commercial process based on information presented in the open literature, such as patents or technical articles. Although they may not reflect in whole or in part the actual plant configuration, we do believe that they are sufficiently representative of the process and process economics within the range of accuracy required for a conceptual process design evaluation.