Removing haze from hydrocarbon oil mixture boiling in the lubricating oil range

摘要

Haze in lube oil is firstly precipitated as wax and ice crystals to form a slurry which is introduced, through inlet (18), into a separation vessel (15) containing a bed of packed aggregate (20) which preferably comprises wax balls, or asphalt or ice chunks. The slurry is indirectly charged with free excess charge which is net unipolar by means of a charge injector 11. The injected charge causes the wax and ice crystals to be electrically driven to and deposited on the aggregate. Periodically, the wax and ice-soiled aggregate is replaced by fresh aggregate and the soiled aggregate can be supplied as feed to a conversion process, which can for example be a catalytic cracking process.