A process for the treatment of oily hazardous solid materials such as for example spent bleaching earths. The process allows a safe and economical recovery of typically about 85% to 95% of the residual oil contained in such oily hazardous solid materials and transforms those ones into inert materials safe to transport, store, dispose of, or even makes them valuable for some applications. The process includes the production of a transportation slurry and at least one extraction slurry. The at least one extraction slurry is separated in at least one centrifuge decanter.

Processes for treating highly viscous hydrocarbons, such as bitumen from oil sands or petroleum residues, with hydrogen-donor solvents are described. The hydrogen-donor solvent is prepared. A mixture of the hydrocarbon and the hydrogen-donor solvent is heated, and the product is cooled to produce a low viscosity and mildly upgraded hydrocarbon. The hydrogen-donor solvent can be modified to improve its solvent usefulness.

According to one or more embodiments described herein, a method for processing a hydrocarbon feedstock may include contacting a mixed feed with a solvent in a deasphalting system to form residue and deasphalted oil, contacting the deasphalted oil with supercritical water to form an upgraded oil, separating the upgraded oil into at least a light fraction and a heavy fraction, and combining at least a portion of the heavy fraction with the hydrocarbon feedstock to form the mixed feed.

Methods are provided for refining natural oil feedstocks. The methods comprise reacting the feedstock in the presence of a metathesis catalyst under conditions sufficient to form a metathesized product comprising olefins and esters. In certain embodiments, the methods further comprise separating the olefins from the esters in the metathesized product. In certain embodiments, the methods further comprise hydrogenating the olefins under conditions sufficient to form a fuel composition. In certain embodiments, the methods further comprise transesterifying the esters in the presence of an alcohol to form a transesterified product.

Processes for preparing a low particulate liquid hydrocarbon product are provided and include blending a tar stream containing particles with a fluid and heating to a temperature of 250° C. or greater to produce a fluid-feed mixture that contains tar, the particles, and the fluid. The fluid-feed mixture contains about 20 wt % or greater of the fluid, based on a combined weight of the tar stream and the fluid. Also, about 25 wt % to about 99 wt % of the particles in the tar stream are dissolved or decomposed when producing the fluid-feed mixture.

The present invention describes the coprocessing of a lignocellulosic liquid stream and an intermediate fossil stream in the oil refining process comprising the steps of (a) contacting said intermediate fossil stream and said lignocellulosic liquid stream with a stream of solvent of C.sub.3-C.sub.10 hydrocarbons in an extraction section, obtaining a stream of extract with solvent and a stream of raffinate with solvent; and (b) sending said stream of extract with solvent to a separation section, obtaining a deasphalted oil stream comprising solvent-free carbon of renewable origin and a stream of recovered solvent. The present invention further relates to a process for producing fuels from the deasphalted oil stream comprising carbon of renewable origin, wherein the process comprises sending the deasphalted oil stream to a conversion section of an oil refinery. The conversion section is selected from catalytic hydrocracking unit, thermal cracking, fluidized-bed catalytic cracking, visbreaking, delayed coking and catalytic reforming.

Compositions and methods for restoring catalytic activity by dissolving soft coke with a solvent, one method including detecting soft coke deposition on a catalyst composition; preparing an aromatic bottoms composition with a Hildebrand solubility parameter of at least about 20 SI to remove the soft coke from the catalyst composition; and washing the catalyst composition with the aromatic bottoms composition until at least a portion of the soft coke deposition is removed.

Described is a novel process for disaggregating biomass pyrolysis oil quantitatively into energy dense hydrophobic aromatic fraction (HAF), fermentable pyrolytic sugars and phenolics based products in a highly economical and energy efficient manner. Phase separation of the esterified pyrolysis oil after an oxidative pre-treatment and the quantitative recovery of the separate fractions is described. Phase separation uses batch as well as continuous reactor systems. The resulting HAF is an energy dense, thermally stable, water free, non-corrosive to carbon steel, and is a free flowing liquid suitable for combustion and for upgrading to transportation fuels. Pyrolytic sugars which are mainly anhydrosugars can be further converted by fermentation to ethanol or other products. Monomeric phenols are useful industrial intermediates and the organic acids in the original pyrolysis oil are mainly recovered as esters of the separation solvents.

A high temperature paraffinic froth treatment (HTPFT) process utilizes an unheated flash vessel as a first stage of solvent recovery in a paraffinic solvent recovery unit (PSRU) to minimize asphaltene precipitation and fouling in subsequent stages of solvent recovery. The HTPFT may utilize a heat pump circuit for heat integration in the PSRU where a first stage of solvent recovery is at a lower temperature than a second stage of solvent recovery. Froth entering froth separation vessels can be heated using heat in a tailings stream using a heat pump. Froth separation vessels used to separate froth for collecting a bitumen-containing overflow utilize a collector pot and conventional feedwell combination, or a combination of a collection ring and nozzle arrangement for reducing disturbance in the vessel and improving collection of the overflow.

The invention relates to hydrocarbon pyrolysis, e.g., the steam cracking of feeds comprising hydrocarbon and nitrogen-containing compositions. The invention also relates to equipment, systems, and apparatus useful for such pyrolysis, to the products and by-products of such pyrolysis, and to the further processing of such products and co-products, e.g., by polymerization.