The Benefits of MSAR®

MSAR® delivers economic, environmental and handling advantages over conventional HFO.

Where a refinery produces heavy fuel oil (HFO), some higher value distillate cutter stocks are diverted and downgraded to the fuel oil pool to dilute the bottom of the barrel residues to mainly control viscosity. In simple terms, the heavier the crude or the more complex the refining process, the higher the cutter stock requirement per ton of residual oil.

MSAR® fuel is manufactured utilising the most viscous refinery residues, the lowest value fraction of the barrel, without any cutter stock addition. By emulsifying these residues with water and proprietary chemicals to produce a comparable fuel oil, as opposed to with high value distillates as per conventional blending, there is considerable scope for enhanced refinery margins.

The economics of the MSAR® refinery application are driven by the upgrading of the high value refinery distillates, and associated yield shift, that would otherwise be downgraded to the fuel oil pool, less adjustments for energy content and logistics (due to water content) and the cost of production, including CapEx and chemicals.

The economics of the MSAR® technology solution enable the refinery to obtain a premium residual oil value, whilst still allowing the MSAR® to be sold at a discount to HFO to incentivise and attract end-users.

Additionally, as a stable emulsion fuel, MSAR® can be handled easily at ambient temperatures (circa 20-30°C), which materially reduces handling and storage costs compared with HFO which typically has to be heated to much higher temperatures (60-100°C) to enable it to be stored and pumped readily.

As the oil phase is pre-atomised within MSAR® to very small sizes ( 5-10 microns) compared with atomised HFO droplets (100 microns), this increased surface area enables essentially complete combustion, leaving virtually no carbon particulates in the exhaust gases. The inherent water within MSAR® also reduces the temperature of combustion, which reduces NOx emissions significantly.

So in addition to the economic benefits of yield shift and reduced handling costs, the technically superior “pre-atomised” MSAR® fuel has enhanced combustion features compared with conventional residual fuels, including:

• Significant NOx reductions of 20-50%, due to reduced combustion temperatures.
• Highly efficient combustion and carbon burnout, as a result of the micro hydrocarbon droplets in MSAR®, potentially reducing ash and particulate/soot emissions.

Quadrise is the licensor of MSAR® technology and offers fully integrated solutions for oil refiners and end users.