Refineries around the world are investing significant effort into increasing the octane ratings of their gasoline and other fuels. Catalytic reforming continues to remain as an important and critical process as it increases naphtha octane for quality gasoline and valuable aromatics.

Catalytic reforming remains a complicated process that involves meticulous care and precision, where refiners have to manage complex problems, just to name a few: quality of feedstock, naphtha hydrotreating, gas leakage in heat exchanger, optimum temperature and pressure, catalyst selection, measuring unwanted gases, simulation of catalytic reforming modelling and others.

Given the complexities in catalytic reforming, it is important for refiners to adopt systematic and practical approach in optimising their reforming process. It is critical for refiners to keep an open mind on new methodologies to achieve highest performance level of their reforming process.

The 3-day interactive training course is specially designed for refineries personnel involved in measuring and running catalytic reforming process to an optimal level.

This advanced course will examine the different approaches taken to maximise the efficiency and performance of their current catalytic reforming process. The training will discuss ways to upgrade their naphtha feedstock, along with methodologies in catalyst selection that work best for their refineries. The training will also look into different modeling techniques that refiners can adopt to simulate reaction change in feed process.

Other areas to be covered include ways to measure pollutants (such as nitrogen) present during conversion process and refiners can explore in cleaning sensitive equipment parts used in the process.  Participants will also learn the successes and failures of other refineries in improving the yield of catalytic reforming process.

Dr Jorge Beltramini Senior Research Fellow ARC Centre of Excellence for Functional Nanomaterials

Dr Jorge Beltramini is currently the Senior Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Functional Nanomaterials, AIBN, University of Queensland. He has more than 25 years of experience in the main areas of Solid State Catalysis, Surface Characterisation, Material Science, Reactor Design and Modelling.

His present research interests include the synthesis, manipulation, along with the physical, chemical and catalytic characterisation of new nanomaterials for natural gas and coal. He is also involved in biomass conversion into valuable chemicals, clean hydrogen production, reformulation of heavy residues, waste plastic degradation into fuels, and heterogenisation of homogeneous catalysis for fine chemicals production.

Dr Beltramini is a recognised authority in the field of catalysis sciences as testified by more than 130 scientific and technical papers delivered at international forums and published in internationally refereed journals. He also collaborates extensively with refineries on research projects as project lead, to name a few:

• Nanomac Group Leader - Nanoporous materials and catalysis
• Project Leader (Saudi Aramco) - Industrial collaborative research project on catalytic membrane reactors for hydrogen production from oil
• Project Leader (Australia-India Research Strategy Fund – DIISR/ IIT Chennai - India) - Catalytic conversion of carbohydrates as renewable raw materials to key platform chemicals
• Project Leader (NIRAP project with DICP, Dalian, China) - Development of innovative catalytic systems for XTL and hydrogen production
• Co-Investigator (CLET Project) - Proof of concept engineering systems for catalytic membrane reactors in coal gasification
• Project Supervisor - Hydrogen production from sugars and carbohydrates
• Project Supervisor - Deoxygenation of fatty acids into gasoline and diesel

For more information about the event, please contact Noni at +65 6732 3830 by email.