Petroleum process engineering, kinetic

Pierre Galtier, Kinetic Methods in Petroleum Process Engineering... 

Galtier P Kinetic methods in petroleum process engineering. Advances in chemical engineering (vol. 32), Amsterdam, 2007, Academic Press, 259—304, 314. 

This revolution will spread to all chemical and petroleum processes that are large enough in scale to justify the investment in model building and experimental verification. Further progress needs better chemical kinetic data. The most deficient area remains in predicting the fluid mechanical and solid flow behaviors in reactors, where progress is sorely needed to round out the science of reaction engineering. 

Dente and Ranzi (in Albright et al., eds.. Pyrolysis Theory and Industrial Practice, Academic Press, 1983, pp. 133-175) Mathematical modehng of hydrocarbon pyrolysis reactions Shah and Sharma (in Carberry and Varma, eds.. Chemical Reaction and Reaction Engineering Handbook, Dekker, 1987, pp. 713-721) Hydroxylamine phosphate manufacture in a slurry reactor Some aspects of a kinetic model of methanol synthesis are described in the first example, which is followed by a second example that describes coping with the multiphcity of reactants and reactions of some petroleum conversion processes. Then two somewhat simph-fied industrial examples are worked out in detail mild thermal cracking and production of styrene. Even these calculations are impractical without a computer. The basic data and mathematics and some of the results are presented. 

Dr. Walas has several decades of varied experience in industry and academia and is an active industrial consultant for the process design of chemical reactors and chemical and petroleum plants. He has written four related books on reaction kinetics, phase equilibria, process equipment selection and design, and mathematical modeling of chemical engineering processes, as well as the sections Reaction Kinetics and Chemical Reactors in the seventh edition of Chemical Engineers Handbook. He is a Fellow of the AlChE and a registered professional engineer. 

The complex nature of the HDS and HDN problems requires a broad, transdisciplinary approach in order to try to answer the most varied questions related to these important classes of reactions. The key issues include the practical aspects related to process and product engineering, a precise knowledge of the nature and the composition of petroleum and of refinery fractions, and the thermodynamics and detailed kinetics of the different processes involved. Also, a number of more fundamental solid-state and surface chemistry considerations regarding the preparation, the characterization, and the resulting properties of HDS and HDN catalysts, as well as the complicated reaction mechanisms involved for the various important families of substrates, need to be understood in depth. Even though some very impressive achievements have been disclosed over the last 30-40 years, it seems that some of the major new discoveries desired today may have been held back by the lack of a better understanding of some key issues. Of particular importance are the nature and the structure of HDS-HDN active sites on metal sulfide catalysts, and the intimate details of the elementary reactions implicated in the commonly accepted catalytic schemes. 

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