Recent progress in hydrotreating kinetics and modeling of heavy oil and residue: A review

• Recent progress in hydrotreating kinetics and modelling of heavy oil and residue. • Advantages and limitation of various kinetic models are discussed. • Challenges and some promising kinetic models are highlighted. The necessity to upgrade the bottom of the barrel into cleaner fuel and more valuable products is continuously increasing. The most common and essential process in refineries to upgrade heavy oil and residue is hydrotreating (HDT). The kinetics of HDT provides valuable information for upgrading chemistry and petroleum refining process. The scope of the present review is to cover the recent progress in HDT kinetics of petroleum heavy oil and residue, including hydroconversion kinetics of some representative model compounds, single/integral kinetic models, lumping models and molecular reconstruction models for HDT of heavy oil and residue. The advantages and disadvantages of various kinetic models are discussed. The discrete lumping models based on data fitting combined with the single event concept are promising. More approaches are needed to develop more accurate and concise kinetic models based on a better understanding of HDT chemistry of the complicated heavy oil and residue.