Ebullated Bed Hydroprocessing with Solvent Deasphalting

The patent combines ebullated bed hydroprocessing with a common fractionation section that processes both virgin crude and synthetic crude together. This merging allows the system to overcome the limitations of existing distillation columns by integrating a conversion process (ebullated bed hydroprocessing) with fractionation, enabling efficient processing of heavy crudes and maximization of white oil products while removing operational constraints through unified processing.

The patent uses virgin crude as a solvent intermediary when processing heavy crudes. The virgin crude acts as a mediator that prevents asphaltene precipitation by maintaining asphaltenes in solution during the ebullated bed hydroprocessing and fractionation process. This intermediary approach allows stable processing of heavy crudes without the harmful asphaltene precipitation that would otherwise occur.

The patent applies solvent deasphalting selectively only to a slip stream of the combined vacuum column bottom rather than to all crude streams. This partial action approach achieves the necessary conversion improvement by treating only the portion that requires it, while avoiding the high capital and operational expenditures that would result from applying solvent deasphalting to all streams. The common fractionation section handles the majority of processing without intensive deasphalting.