Patent ID: 8052864

Claim:
A process to prepare a sweet crude from an ash containing and heavy fraction of a tar sand oil by: (a) supplying an atmospheric distillation bottoms of a tar sands originated feed to a vacuum distillation to obtain a vacuum gas oil and a vacuum bottoms, (b) contacting the vacuum gas oil with hydrogen in the presence of a suitable hydrocracking catalyst to obtain a sweet synthetic crude (c) separating the vacuum bottoms obtained in step (a) into an asphalt fraction comprising between 0.1 and 4 wt % ash and a de-asphalted oil, (d) feeding said asphalt fraction to a burner of a gasification reactor where the asphalt fraction is partially oxidized in the presence of an oxidizer gas in a burner to obtain a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, (e) performing a water gas shift reaction on the mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, (f) separating hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide from the shifted gas in an acid removal unit thereby obtaining crude hydrogen, (g) purifying the crude hydrogen to obtain pure hydrogen and (h) using part of the pure hydrogen in step (b), wherein in step (d) the asphalt fraction is provided to the burner in a liquid state and wherein in case separation step (c) fails to provide sufficient feed for step (d), step (d) is performed by feeding the vacuum bottoms of step (a) to the burner in a liquid state.