Blending fluid catalytic cracking

The modem gasolines are produced by blending products from cmde oil distillation, that is, fluid catalytic cracking, hydrocraking, reforming, coking, polymerization, isomerization, and alkylation.Two clear examples of the possible use of solid-acid catalysts in refining processes are the isomerization of lineal alkanes and the alkylation of isobutene with butanes. In both these cases, and due to the octane... 

The fluid catalytic cracking process using vacuum gas oil feedstock was introduced into the refineries in the 1930s. In recent years, because of a trend for low-boiling products, most refineries perform the operation by partially blending... 

Fluid catalytic cracking, fluid cat-cracking or FCC, is a common oil refinery process. The duty of an FCC unit is to take a heavy low value gas oil or fuel oil and convert this to higher valued liquid products, particularly gasoline blend-stock. The process also produces diesel fuel blend-stock and a gas by-product stream. The gaseous by-products are rich in olefins and in particular propylene and isobutene. Ethylene is a minor component. 

Lower olefins are produced in large quantities by cracking processes like steam or fluid catalytic cracking. C2-C4 olefins are the most important base chemicals. For many years, the usage of the C4-olefins has been limited to mainly alkylate production, gasoline blending or simply burning. 

The method has not been tested by ASTM for refinery individual hydrocarbon process streams, such as reformates, fluid catalytic cracking naphthas, etc., used in blending of gasolines. 

Recent efforts have also attempted to utilize the fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) technology directly for processing bio-oil. It has been found that the use of raw bio-oil as a diluted feedstock for the FCC may be a useful application. It is certainly a direct means of utilization of a renewable feedstock while making only a minor impact on the refinery operation. The bio-oil can only be processed by FCC as a supplemental feedstock to the typical vacuum gas oil petroleum feedstock. Results in a demonstration-scale reactor have shown up to 20% blending can be acceptable in the cracker without major impact to the operation (Pinho et al., 2015). 

The fluidized-bed reactor (FBR) has the ability to process large volumes of fluid. For the catalytic cracking of petroleum naphthas to form gasoline blends, as an example, the virtues of the fluidized-bed reactor drove its competitors from the market. Below is an outline of the FBR material found on the CD-ROM. 

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