ABSTRACT
The influx of heavy feedstocks into refineries creates challenges but, at the same time, creates opportunities by improving the ability of refineries to handle heavy feedstocks thereby enhancing refinery flexibility to meet the increasingly stringent product specifications for refined fuels (Speight, 2013, 2014a,b). Upgrading heavy feedstocks is an increasingly prevalent means of extracting the maximum amount of liquid fuels from each barrel of crude oil that enters the refinery. Although solvent deasphalting and coking processes are used in refineries to upgrade heavy feedstocks to intermediate products that may be processed to produce transportation fuels, the integration of heavy feedstock processing units and gasification presents some unique synergies that will enhance the future refinery (Figure 14.1; Wallace et al., 1998; Penrose et al., 1999; Gray and Tomlinson, 2000; Abadie and Chamorro, 2009; Speight, 2011b, 2014a; Wolff and Vliegenthart, 2011).
