Abstract In recent years, China's refining, aromatics, and olefin industries are undergoing profound changes, and the refining industry has gradually transformed from mass production of clean fuels to concurrent production of basic chemical raw materials. In this paper, the technical status of processing poor quality resources such as light cycle oil (LCO) in traditional refining configuration was analyzed firstly. It was pointed out that the chemical utilization of polycyclic aromatics resources is an effective way to help the transformation of current refineries to chemicals plant and the improvement of profits and efficiency. On the basis of proposed five criterions that must be met in the chemical-targeted utilization of LCO, this paper focused on both the catalyst and the process strategies that should be adopted. Different from fuel-targeted hydrocracking catalyst using USY zeolite with high spaciousness index, chemical-targeted hydrocracking catalyst relied on zeolite with low spaciousness index, to improve the yield and purity of aromatics. In order to eliminate the inhibition of ammonia produced in hydrotreating process on the acid center of zeolite, a two-stage LCO conversion process was proposed and applied. Based on the proprietary chemical-targeted hydrocracking catalyst and two-stage process, maximum production of basic chemicals from LCO was achieved. The yield of light aromatics was more than 45%, and the purity of xylenes was up to 99%. The C9 and C10 aromatics met the feed requirements of aromatics unit. The ethane and C3-C5 light alkane products met the feed requirements of steam cracking unit.
