Visbreaker
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from Upgrader)
A visbreaker is a chemical plant based on a techology whereby via thermal cracking in a furnace reactor (at high temperature) heavy hydrocarbons (e.g. vacuum distillation residue) is transformed into lighter hydrocarbons. Heavy hydrocarbons are generally used as fuel oil in chemical plants. The product of the visbreaker has a lower viscosity. In ecomomic terms this means that less diluents have to be added to use the vacuum residue as fuel oil. The name visbreaker literally means "breaks the viscosity".
