Course Agenda

Day One – Sunday, 13 May 2012

  • Administrative details
  • Introductions and networking
  • Overview of the programme
  • Characteristics of crude oil
    • Composition
    • Description of crude oil fractions
    • Definition of physical and chemical processes
  • Fundamentals of petroleum chemistry
    • Description of a hydrocarbon molecule
    • Types of hydrocarbon molecules
    • Definition/function of a catalyst
  • Fundamentals of crude oil distillation
    • Description of the distillation process
    • Cut points of the various fractions
  • Basic refinery flow configuration and auxiliary processes
    • Refinery flow scheme
    • Gasoline processing options
    • Heavy oil processing options
    • Auxiliary refinery processes: gas plant, sulfur recovery, etc.

Day Two – Monday, 14 May 2012

  • Product blending and usage
    • Gasoline properties and blending
    • Distillate fuels: heating oil, diesel, jet fuel
    • Residual materials: bunker fuel, etc.
    • Lube and specialty products
  • Descriptions of the gasoline production processes
    • Catalytic reforming
    • Isomerisation
    • Fluid catalytic cracking
    • Alkylation

Day Three – Tuesday, 15 May 2012

  • Fundamentals of hydroprocessing
    • Hydrotreating
    • Hydrocracking and de-alkylation
    • Fluidised catalytic cracking, hydrodesulfurisation
  • Ziegler-Natta polymerisation
    • Commercial Ziegler-Natta polymers
    • Heterogeneous Ziegler-Natta catalysts and mechanism of polymerisation
    • Stereochemistry of Ziegler-Natta polymerisation
    • Metathesis and ring-opening metathesis polymerisation
  • Basic principles of metallocene and single-site chemistry and catalysts historical development of metallocene catalysts
    • Titanocene and lanthanide catalysts 
    • Zirconocene catalysts  
    • Current scope of metallocene catalyst applications

Day Four – Wednesday, 16 May 2012

  • Reaction mechanisms
    • Catalyst activation, propagation, chain transfer, deactivation processes
    • Active site structure during catalisis
    • Key requirements and implications 
    • Co-catalysts, influence of counterions, Lewis Bases
    • TMA
    • Kinetic profiles
    • Comparison of single-site and multi-site catalysts
  • Competitive advances in Zeigler-Natta technology for polypropylene and polyethylene
    • Advanced Zeigler-Natta catalysis and multiple process technology vs. metallocene revolution
    • Competition and complementarily 
    • Stepping out of the box with Zeigler-Natta and metallocene catalyst for propylene based resins
    • NovaCat T: A new Zeigler-Natta catalyst for polyethylene production in gas phase reactors
  • Structure of the petroleum refining industry
    • A basic view of the petroleum refining economics
    • Impact of gasoline reformulation on refinery operations
    • Use of ethanol vs. MTBE
  • Overview of the U.S. refining industry
  • Review of key refining definitions
  • Introducing case studies for catalysis improvement