When a North American refiner had a pain point of end-of-cycle feed tailoring, conventional catalysts couldn’t deliver. The solution: Celestia™ – an ultra-high activity hydroprocessing catalyst, developed in partnership with ExxonMobil. 

The LCO hydrocracker faced a common industry problem where operators had to reduce feed difficulty at end of cycle to maintain performance targets. This feed tailoring left money on the table, forcing the refinery to process less challenging, lower-margin feedstocks when catalyst activity declined. 

The unit processed ALGO/LCO with 19 API gravity, 840°F+ final boiling point, 2.3 wt% sulfur, 760 wppm nitrogen and 60 wt% aromatics—a difficult slate requiring exceptional hydrotreating performance to achieve their cycle length requirements. 

Ketjen deployed Celestia™ catalyst, representing approximately 25% of active reactor volume in an optimized stack with conventional NiMo catalysts. The results exceeded the customer’s objectives: 

• Feed flexibility restored: Eliminated feed tailoring through the entire cycle 
• Increased throughput: Processed 7% more total feed and 13% more LCO 
• No cycle penalty: Maintained the same run length with more challenging feeds 
• The deployment generated $20-25 million per year in estimated net benefit¹ . 

Celestia represents a step-change improvement in bulk metal oxide catalyst technology. Co-developed by ExxonMobil and Ketjen over more than five years with extensive pilot plant operations, Celestia delivers significantly higher hydrodenitrogenation, hydrodesulfurization and aromatic saturation activity compared to conventional catalysts and even its predecessor, Nebula. 

Since its first commercial application in 2015, Celestia has demonstrated robust performance across various applications including distillate hydrotreaters and hydrocracker pretreaters. ExxonMobil has aggressively deployed the technology across 12 units in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, capturing benefits including cycle extension, increased cracked stocks processing and rate increases. 

What makes Celestia transformative is its ability to unlock value throughout the refinery. The exceptional activity enables: 

• Widening crude diet envelopes to process opportunity crudes 
• Aligning turnaround schedules across units 
• Optimizing product blending with improved cold flow properties 
• Increasing refinery utilization 
• Driving energy efficiency through lower operating temperatures 

The Ketjen-ExxonMobil collaboration spans more than 15 years of co-developing bulk metal catalysts, from the pioneering Nebula technology through today’s industry-leading Celestia platform. This partnership combines complementary expertise to deliver proven, reliable solutions for refiners worldwide. 

For refineries facing similar challenges – constrained by catalyst activity, seeking to process more difficult feeds or looking to optimize refinery-wide margins – Celestia offers a proven, capital-free solution with documented commercial success.

¹Estimated using general historical ranges for USGC feeds & products. Will vary depending on site specific feeds, unit configuration, processing objectives, and next best alternative feed dispositions