Particles catalytic crackers

Figure 7.7b shows the essential features of a refinery catalytic cracker. Large molar mass hydrocarbon molecules are made to crack into smaller hydrocarbon molecules in the presence of a solid catalyst. The liquid hydrocarbon feed is atomized as it enters the catalytic cracking reactor and is mixed with the catalyst particles being carried by a flow of steam or light hydrocarbon gas. The mixture is carried up the riser and the reaction is essentially complete at the top of the riser. However, the reaction is accompanied by the deposition of carbon (coke) on the surface of the catalyst. The catalyst is separated from the gaseous products at the top of the reactor. The gaseous products leave the reactor... 

At very high gas velocities the particles are carried out of the top of the bed. This is known as fast fluidization and is a type of pneumatic conveying. Fast fluidization has been used in catalytic crackers in order to circulate the catalyst particles the gas velocity is also high enough to break down any agglomerates of solids thus improving performance. 

In a typical fluid catalytic cracker, catalyst particles are continuously circulated from one portion of the operation to another. Figure 9 shows a schematic flow diagram of a typical unit W. Hot gas oil feed (500 -700°F) is mixed with 1250 F catalyst at the base of the riser in which the oil and catalyst residence times (from a few seconds to 1 min.) and the ratio of catalyst to the amount of oil is controlled to obtain the desired level of conversion for the product slate demand. The products are then removed from the separator while the catalyst drops back into the stripper. In the stripper adsorbed liquid hydrocarbons are steam stripped from the catalyst particles before the catalyst particles are transferred to the regenerator. 

Figure 9.38, for example, shows the application of the chemical mass balance approach to the fine particle fraction of particles collected at a location in Philadelphia (Dzubay et at., 1988 Olmez et al., 1988 Gordon, 1988). If the set of equations (II) fitted the data perfectly, the sum of the contributions of the various sources would be 100% for each element. Clearly, from the top frame, this is not the case for a number of elements, and both positive and negative deviations from 100% can be seen. However, the contributions of several sources are clear Si and Fe from soil, Ni, V, and Ca from oil-fired power plants, Ti from a paint pigment plant, La, Ce, and Sm from a catalytic cracker, K, Zn, and Sn from an incinerator, Sb from an antimony roaster, and Pb and Br from motor vehicles. 

The performance of a fluidized bed combustor is strongly influenced by the fluid mechanics and heat transfer in the bed, consideration of which must be part of any attempt to realistically model bed performance. The fluid mechanics and heat transfer in an AFBC must, however, be distinguished from those in fluidized catalytic reactors such as fluidized catalytic crackers (FCCs) because the particle size in an AFBC, typically about 1 mm in diameter, is more than an order of magnitude larger than that utilized in FCC s, typically about 50 ym. The consequences of this difference in particle size is illustrated in Table 1. Particle Reynolds number in an FCC is much smaller than unity so that viscous forces dominate whereas for an AFBC the particle Reynolds number is of order unity and the effect of inertial forces become noticeable. Minimum velocity of fluidization (u ) in an FCC is so low that the bubble-rise velocity exceeds the gas velocity in the dense phase (umf/cmf) over a bed s depth the FCC s operate in the so-called fast bubble regime to be elaborated on later. By contrast- the bubble-rise velocity in an AFBC may be slower or faster than the gas-phase velocity in the emulsion... 

Solids of group A have small particle diameters (% 0.1 mm) or low bulk densities this class includes catalysts used, for example, in the fluidized-bed catalytic cracker. As the gas velocity u increases beyond the minimum fluidization point, the bed of such a solid first expands uniformly until bubble formation sets in at u = //mb > mr. The bubbles grow by coalescence but break up again after passing a certain size. At a considerable height above the gas distributor grid, a dynamic equilibrium is formed between bubble growth... 

A cyclone outside the moving-bed catalytic colnmn serves to sort only catalyst particles of a desired size among the catalyst particles dropped to the lower portion. A nickel-molybdenum catalyst regenerator with an air injector serves to regenerate the catalyst transferred from the cyclone and the regenerated catalyst is then returned to the moving-bed catalytic cracker [29],... 

Bed Preparation. To begin the process, solid particles are placed or injected onto a bed in a holding unit. This is called a packed or a fixed bed, until fluid is applied. The bed is typically in a reactor, boiler furnace, or another part of a processing unit, such as the catalytic riser of a refinery s fluid catalytic cracker. There are different kinds of beds, the most common being stationary or bubbling beds or more complex circulating beds. 

The great technical advantage of the fluid catalytic cracker is that the long hydrocarbon chains, typically light fuel (or gas) oil, come into contact with the solid catalyst particles in a fluidized, rather than a stationary, hed environment. That means that the total surface area between catalyst and oil particles is much larger than possible if the catalyst were just fixed to the floor or sides of the reactor. In the cracker s catalytic riser, tiny catalyst particles are completely surrounded by the oil particles and swim in a fluid stream together for a few crucial fractions of a second. 

Control of catalyst particle losses from both the cracker and regenerator of fluid catalytic cracking units is achieved by two cyclones operating in series right inside each unit. This is usually followed by an electrostatic precipitator for fine particle control, working on the exhaust side of the catalyst regenerator [62]. The metal content of spent catalysts may be recovered for reuse [63]. 

A major application of fluidized bed technology is to be found in the catalytic-cracking reactor, or Cat Cracker , which lies at the heart of the petroleum refining process. Here, the catalyst particles (which promote the breakdown of the large crude petroleum molecules into the smaller constituents of gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, etc.) are fluidized by the vaporized crude oil. An unwanted by-product of the reactions is carbon, which deposits on the particle surfaces, thereby blocking their catalytic action. The properties of the fluidized state are further exploited to overcome this problem. The catalyst is reactivated continuously by circulating it to another bed, where it is fluidized with air in which the carbon burns... 

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