A simple model of an industrial catalytic cracking riser reactor

Abstract

An ever-increasing complexity of the models of catalytic cracking (which is rarely justified by available monitoring data) makes “practical” modelling for industrial units challenging. In this work, we develop a simple numerical model for an industrial catalytic riser, the model with phenomenological parameters that are determined from an available monitoring data. The model is based on a four-lump reaction scheme (with coke being one of the lumps), with the kinetic parameters determined for an industrial reactor with zeolite-containing catalyst that is used for production of wet gases. The expression for the reaction rate reflects that reactions in gaseous phase occur in presence of solid (catalyst) phase. Hydrodynamics of non-isothermal reactive gas-solid mixtures is captured by a two-fluid model. Strong turbulence nature of the reactor flow makes possible to disregard the kinetic theory - based values for viscous, diffusion, and thermal conductivity coefficients (additionally reducing the number of needed empirical coefficients). The resultant model is applied for an in-depth analysis of the flow fields in the reactor, demonstrating a good agreement of the results with more sophisticated approaches. The model is also applied for calculation of optimal intakes of water vapour and catalyst.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Anatoliy Vorobev: orcid.org/0000-0002-6458-9390

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