Method for separation of hydrocarbon oils from a waxy feedstock and apparatus for implementation of said method

Abstract

A method and apparatus for separation of hydrocarbon oil and wax from a hydrocarbon waxy feedstock is disclosed. Said method comprises cooling the feedstock by a cooling agent so as to induce crystallization of hard wax crystals containing some quantity of oil. The method comprises the steps of providing a vessel defined by a tubular shell closed at its opposite ends by a front cover and by a rear cover, said vessel having a longitudinal central axis, providing a plurality of hollow partitions dividing said vessel into plurality of compartments, each of said partitions having an inlet port for introducing the cooling agent thereinto and an outlet port for evacuating the cooling agent therefrom, providing a plurality of branch pipes having bridging portions, which allow flow communication between adjacent partitions such that the inlet port of a one hollow partition is in fluid communication with the outlet port of an adjacent hollow partition, providing a flow of the feedstock mixture along the vessel in a direction from the forward port to the rear port, providing a flow of the cooling agent through said plurality of hollow partitions in a counter-current direction, said method further comprises orientation of said vessel horizontally and deployment of said branch pipes outside the vessel and at the same side from the longitudinal axis. The invention allows increasing the hard wax yield and at the same time to simplify the whole process since the slack wax cooling and hard wax crystallization could be carried out without preliminary dilution of said slack wax feedstock. Furthermore by virtue of the present invention there is no need to complete the crystallization in the double-pipe scraped-surface chiller, and the second stage of filtration can be excluded.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.