Opportunity crudes and refinery challenges during hydrocracking operations—Part 1

Rocio Hoces Hurtado is a Senior Process Engineer at CEPSA’s La Rábida Refinery. She received her degree in chemical engineering from the Polytechnic University of Madrid in Spain. Her first role was as a Maintenance Engineer at Pharma in Madrid. Afterwards, she decided to pursue a different career path and joined CEPSA as a process engineer. A few months later, she was appointed Senior Process Engineer in charge of the hydrocracking, hydroprocessing and hydrogen units at the La Rábida refinery, where her main responsibilities include daily monitoring and process and energy optimization, as well as responsibility for turnaround planning, including catalyst replacement.

María Ángeles Romero Vázquez is a Senior Research and Development Chemical Engineer at CEPSA’s Research Center in Madrid. In the refining department, she is responsible for hydroprocessing, development of lubricant base oils, and hydrogen production by steam reforming. She graduated in chemical engineering from Complutense University in Madrid and also holds an MBA degree. Her work is focused on optimizing the selection of catalysts to be loaded at industrial units by combining pilot plant testing of commercial catalysts vs. potential crude oil baskets and dialogue with catalyst suppliers. She also provides technical assistance to CEPSA refineries through modeling and follow-up on industrial units.

Xavier Ruiz Maldonado is the Principal Hydrocracking Catalyst Engineer at Haldor Topsoe A/S. He holds an MSc degree in chemical engineering from Simon Bolivar University in Venezuela. He works in the Hydrocracking Technical Support Group at Haldor Topsoe in Denmark, where his main responsibility is to advise refinery customers on startup, monitoring and troubleshooting of hydrocracking and hydrotreating units. He also works in collaboration with Topsoe Research and Development for pilot plant test planning and catalyst calculations. Prior to working at Topsoe, Mr. Maldonado was Lead Process Engineer at the Amuay refinery (Paraguaná refinery complex) and Project Engineer on the design of a diesel and hydrogen plant. He has more than 13 yr of research experience with catalyst formulation for hydrotreating and selective hydrogenation of diolefins.