Crude fluid catalytic cracking

Product separation for main fractionators is also often called black oil separation. Main fractionators are typically used for such operations as preflash separation, atmospheric crude, gas oil crude, vacuum preflash crude, vacuum crude, visbreaking, coking, and fluid catalytic cracking. In all these services the object is to recover clean, boiling range components from a black multicomponent mixture. But main fractionators are also used in hydrocracker downstream processing. This operation has a clean feed. Nevertheless, whenever you hear the term black oil, understand that what is really meant is main fractionator processing. 

Fluid catalytic cracking units (FCC or FCCU) are the major processing units to reduce boiling ranges of those crude oil components that have boiling points higher than the final boiling points of the transportation fuels—typically above 650°F (343°C). These... 

A fluid catalytic cracking unit in Joliet, Illinois, converts bea components of crude oils into high octane gasoline and distillates. (Corbis Corporation)... 

They began reduced crude cracking experimentation in a small 12,000 barrel per day (B/D) Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) operating unit at Louisville, Ky. The RCC process was born from these goals, concepts and a small operating unit. The development and attributes of this process have been described in a number of articles and patents (1-6). 

Table III. Fluid Catalytic Cracking of Reduced Crude Using Activated Natural Clay...

Table 7-9 Fluid Catalytic Cracking of Residua from Hydrodesulfurization of Alaskan Crude Oils... 

Combined with hydrodesulfurization, the process is fully applicable to the feed preparation for fluid catalytic cracking and hydrocracking. The process is capable of using a variety of feedstocks including atmospheric and vacuum residues derived from various crude oils, oil sand, visbroken tar and so on. 

With this decision made, Ashland set out to develop a new residual oil conversion process which could effectively produce a greater amount of transportation fuel from each barrel of crude processed. It was concluded that a new process would take the best features from the fluid catalytic cracking process and couple them with innovative improvements in related key areas such as unique... 

Huge amounts of catalyst are consumed for refinery operations to convert crude oil into lower molecular-weight fractions (fluid catalytic cracking). Many of the catalyst compositions available contain lanthanides including cerium [13]. 

Specialised units are used to simulate complex fractionation processes in petroleum refining. Typical configuration consists of a main column with pump-around and side strippers (Fig. 3.14). Among applications, we may cite pre-flash tower, crude atmospheric distillation, or Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) main fractionator. 

HDT Hydrotreatments, FCC Fluid catalytic cracking, HDC Hydrocracking, Atm. Dist. crude in atmospheric distillation. 

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