Improved Gasoline Yield from Fluid Catalytic Cracker Riser Reactor

Abstract

The study focused on improvement and conversion of vacuum gas oil as feedstock to fluid catalytic cracker riser reactor with enhanced yield of gasoline, liquefied petroleum gas and fuel gas products and low yield of coke as undesired product. Thus, steady state performance models were developed for riser reactor as a plug flow reactor using five lump kinetic scheme to study the cracking operations. Models were developed for the riser reactor as plug flow reactor using the principles of conservation of mass and energy with higher yield of desired products (gasoline, liquefied petroleum gas and fuel gas) and low yield of coke. This research products yield were compared with products yield of previous study and the higher yield of this study is based on the efficiency of estimation technique applied in determining the kinetic parameters of the process rather than applying literature data. Developed models were solved using MatLab ODE45 solver and the kinetic parameters estimated using single point regression analysis, and the value of the estimated kinetic parameters were compared with literature data and models results also compared with plant data obtained from Port Harcourt refinery Company Limited with reasonable agreement. The developed models showed higher gasoline yield of 56.47%, liquefied petroleum gas yield of 18.24%, fuel gas yield of 15.49% and coke yield of 3.16% due to the efficacy of estimated kinetic parameters values. Sensitivity analysis performed on the fluid catalytic cracking riser reactor at preheat feed temperature of 478 K and reactor riser temperature of 817 K provided the optimum yield of products.