AN AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY JOURNAL VOLUME 8, NUMBER 3
MAYIJUNE 1994
Q Copyright 1994 American Chemical Society
Symposium Symposium on Resid Upgrading: An Introduction This issue of Energy & Fuels places special emphasis on Resid Upgrading. Both environmental and business forces make this especially cogent. Industry statistics indicates that the quality of crude oil has been steadily decreasing, while its gravity has been increasing. This trend is expected to continue. Moreover, these low-quality crudes contain increasing amounts of sulfur that will heighten emission problems if untreated. Heavy crudes contain proportionately large amounts of resid, where the sulfur, other heteroatoms, and processing challenges in general tend to concentrate. In addition, the competitive market forces have driven refiners to process all parts of the crude barrel. The product perspective offers additional incentive. There was a time when refiners could simply blend off the resid in bunker fuel without adding much process. However, due to ever stringent environmental regulations, the demand for heavy fuel has been declining every year. This low demand for residual fuel creates the opportunities for its upgrading to premium transportation fuel. However, the cruel reality is that these upgrading technologies also require major capital investment. With this backdrop, the scientific community needs to keep stock of the status of our knowledge base and make sure to disseminate new knowledge in a timely manner so as to facilitate commercialization effectively. With this in mind, a symposium on Resid Upgrading was organized for the 206th National ACS Meeting in Denver (April 1993). This issue of Energy & Fuels covers largely the papers presented at the symposium. The one and a half day symposium had a balanced representation from academia and industry, both domestic and overseas. The organizers of the symposium express their sincere appreciation to contributors and other participants. We also thank Dr. John Larsen and the ACS for providing an excellent forum on which the issues concerning Resid Upgrading could be addressed.
Dr. Byung C. Choi
Mobil Research and Development Corp. Paulsboro Research Laboratory Paulsboro, New Jersey 08066
0887-0624/94/2508-0517$04.50/0
Dr. Michael T. Klein
Department of Chemical Engineering University of Delaware Newark, Delaware 19716
0 1994 American Chemical Society
