Fuel 294 (2021) 120476

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Fuel
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/fuel

Short communication

API-Barrel Yield: A new index for evaluating heavy oil

upgrading technologies
Jorge Ancheyta
Instituto Mexicano del Petróleo, Eje Central Lázaro Cárdenas Norte 152, Col. San Bartolo Atepehuacan, México City 07730, Mexico

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: A new index for comparing heavy oil upgrading technologies is proposed. The index considers both API gravity
Heavy oil upgrading and upgraded product yield. Although simple in nature, the new index has never been proposed so far. Various
API gravity examples taken from the literature have been used to demonstrate its usefulness as compared with single
Upgraded oil yield
properties in terms of deciding which technology behaves better than others.
API-Barrel yield

1. Introduction
Most of the fuel components that are produced in the petroleum
refining units are characterized by certain physical and chemical prop­
erties, which are required to accomplish the final products specifica­
tions. For instance, cetane number and sulfur content are the most
important properties to produce ultra-low sulfur diesel, while octane
number and sulfur content are for commercial gasoline. In the case of
gasoline components, they come from different processes such as cata­
lytic reforming, fluid catalytic cracking (FCC), alkylation, etc. Particu­
larly, in the FCC units there is a compromise between octane and yield of
gasoline, in such a way that the unit operation is adjusted to maximize
the combination of these two parameters. For this reason, an index based
on gasoline octane number and yield has been defined as Octane-Barrel
Yield as follows:
( )
R+M
Octane-Barrel Yield = (Gasoline yield) (1)
2
where R is the research octane number (RON) and M the motor octane
number (MON).
Using octane-barrel yield or simply octane-barrel allows the refiners
for proper selection of catalysts, operating conditions and feedstocks,
when both gasoline octane and gasoline production need to be
maximized.
When evaluating technologies for upgrading of heavy oils either in-
situ or ex-situ, parameters such as API gravity and upgraded oil yield are
typically used since both the quality and quantity respectively are of
great importance for deciding which catalyst, operating conditions,
feed, etc. give the best performance [1,2]. On the one hand, the content
of resins and asphaltenes, as well as their ratio, determines the API
gravity of an oil. On the other hand, the yield of upgraded oil is crucial
for optimization of technological processes. However, up to date there
are not reports in the literature that combine both parameters. There­
fore, introduction of a new index that combines API gravity and yield of
upgraded oil is necessary, which is the aim of the present work.
2. The proposed index
Various technologies for upgrading of heavy oils are available in the
literature, which are mainly based on hydrogen addition and carbon
rejection routes. Compilations of traditional upgrading technologies,
combination of upgrading technologies and emerging upgrading tech­
nologies have been already summarized by my research group [2,3,4].
When comparing heavy oil upgrading technologies both API gravity and
upgraded oil yield are necessary to take into consideration for proper
selection. Based on this and on the Octane-Barrel index, I propose the
following new index:

API-Barrel Yield = (API gravity of upgraded oil)(Upgraded oil volumetric yield) (2)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2021.120476
Received 14 January 2021; Received in revised form 8 February 2021; Accepted 10 February 2021
Available online 9 March 2021
0016-2361/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
J. Ancheyta Fuel 294 (2021) 120476

where the yield of upgraded oil is calculated with the volumetric flow­ 100 2500
rate of upgraded oil divided by the volumetric flowrate of the liquid
feed. Based on Eq. (2), the API-Barrel Yield has units of API degrees × 80 2000
Vol%, however to keep its simplicity, it can be used with only the
resulting number.

API gravity or Yield

API-Barrel Yield
The API-Barrel Yield or simply API-Barrel becomes an important new 60 1500

index that can help make decisions on which change in upgrading

processes (catalyst, feed, reaction condition) is better than others. Of 40 1000
course, the final decision must be done based on a series of criteria and
not only with API-Barrel Yield.
20 500

3. Results and discussion

0 0
DC-GF SDA-GF DC-SDA-GF
To illustrate the use of API-Barrel Yield index, examples of com­
parisons of various process technologies were taken from the literature. Fig. 1. Comparison of gasification-based process schemes. (□) Yield, Vol%, ( )
API gravity, (■) API-Barrel Yield.
a) Upgrading process schemes based on gasification

Three process schemes were evaluated with the same crude oil feed 120 4000
(13.9oAPI) and combinations of solvent deasphalting (SDA), delayed
coking (DC) and gasification (GF) [5]. The general process scheme 100 3500
consisted of atmospheric distillation unit, vacuum distillation unit, and
the bottom-of-barrel conversion process (combinations of SDA, DC and

API-Barrel Yield
API gravity or Yield
80 3000
GF). The upgraded oil was obtained by blending the liquid products
from the vacuum residue conversion unit and distillates coming from 60 2500

atmospheric and vacuum distillation units. The results of API gravity

and yield of the upgraded oil, as well as the API-Barrel Yield are shown 40 2000

in Fig. 1. The highest upgraded oil yield is obtained with the SDA/DC/
GF process scheme, while the highest API gravity is observed in the DC/ 20 1500

GF process scheme. These values do not allow for establishing a clear

advantage on which process scheme is better than other based on API 0 1000
DC EBH
gravity and yield of upgraded oil separately. The values of API-Barrel
Yield according to Eq. (2) are the following: 2255 for DC-GF, 1663 for Fig. 2. Comparison of delayed coking and ebullated-bed hydrocracking. (□)
SDA-GF, and 1954 for DC-SDA-GF. Now, it is clearly observed that the Yield, Vol%, ( ) API gravity, (■) API-Barrel Yield.
DC-GF process scheme maximized both API gravity and yield of
upgraded oil, while the SDA-GF process scheme exhibits the lowest API-
Barrel Yield. 100 1200

b) Delayed coking versus hydrocracking 80 1100

Another example consists of the comparison of delayed coking versus

API-Barrel Yield
API gravity or Yield

60 1000
ebullated-bed hydrocracking (EBH) for the upgrading of bitumen [6].
The results are shown in Fig. 2. It is evident that EBH resulted to be
superior to DC in terms of the API-Barrel Yield, although having more or 40 900
less the same API gravity of the upgraded oil. This is due, in part, to the
rejection of carbon-rich material in the DC, while EBH maximizes the 20 800
liquid yield by converting heavy hydrocarbons into lighter oils.

c) Solvent deasphalting-Visbreaking versus Visbreaking-Solvent 0 700

desasphalting
Cold Lake bitumen was used to evaluate the impact of the process
sequence, solvent deasphalting followed by visbreaking (VB) compared
with visbreaking followed by solvent deasphalting [7]. The results are
presented in Fig. 3. It was observed that SDA-VB achieved higher yield
than VB-SDA (~2%), but lower API gravity (~0.6oAPI). In this case the
API-Barrel Yield resulted slightly higher for the case of VB-SDA (1055)
as compared with SDA-VB (1027), due mainly to the differences in
upgraded oil yield.
From the three provided examples it is clear that using only API
gravity or liquid yield of upgraded oil to evaluate the performance of
different heavy oil upgrading technologies is not sufficient for appro­
priate comparisons.
SDA-VB VB-SDA
Fig. 3. Comparison of solvent deasphalting and visbreaking process schemes.
(□) Yield, Vol%, ( ) API gravity, (■) API-Barrel Yield.
4. Conclusions
The API-Barrel Yield index is proposed to provide an additional
criterion when selecting catalysts (as in the case of hydrogen addition-
based technologies), operating conditions, feedstock properties, pro­
cess combinations, and sequence of technologies. To make final de­
cisions, other important aspects must be considered such as price of
heavy oil and upgraded oil, investment and operating costs, and
particular characteristics of the technologies.

2
J. Ancheyta Fuel 294 (2021) 120476

Credit authorship contribution statement References

Jorge Ancheyta: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation,
Methodology, Validation.
Declaration of competing interest
The author declares that he has no known competing financial in­
terests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Professor Jorge Ramirez from UNAM for deep
discussions on the need of a new index for evaluating the performance of
heavy oil upgrading technologies.
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