Review of Current and Emerging Technologies for Heavy Oil Upgrading

During the years after the discovery of crude oil, many upgrading technologies based on carbon rejection and hydrogen addition, are developed. The level of development and the number of its application depends directly on several factors such as ease of operation, investment cost and products quality. The growing trend of heavy and extra heavy oil production and the need of refinery to these resources, result in creation and development of new upgrading technologies. Despite the effectiveness of current technologies, while refineries feedstock becomes heavier, these technologies faced with serious limitations to proportion crude oil processing. In this paper, some of the emerging technologies for heavy oil upgrading heave been reviewed and the most important current technologies for heavy oil upgrading have studied.