Key Factors to Use Existing Commercial Hydrotreating Plants for the Co-Hydrotreating of Vegetable Oil and Gas Oil

The production of renewable fuels by co-hydrotreating is considered a very promising solution to make use of the existing petroleum refining infrastructure. Differently to stand-alone hydrotreating, co-hydrotreating requires lower investment costs. To design a co-hydrotreating of vegetable oil and gas oil, various issues need to be properly examined. This work reports an extensive review and discussion of such issues to provide a clear understanding of the effects on feedstocks, operating conditions, catalysts, corrosion, and product quality. The discussion also includes the challenges for modeling and simulation of co-hydrotreating processes.