Five-lump kinetic model with selective catalyst deactivation for the prediction of the product selectivity in the fluid catalytic cracking process

The effective simulation of the fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) operation requires a good understanding of many factors such as, reaction kinetics, fluid dynamics, and feed and catalyst effects. The different product slates that can be obtained are the consequence of a complex reaction scheme including cracking, isomerization, hydrogen transfer, oligomerization, etc. Furthermore, the catalyst deactivation may affect each one of the reactions in different ways, which creates an additional reason for different variation with time-on-stream of the yield to each product. On the basis of the experimental data of the FCC pilot plant operated in Chemical Process Engineering Research Institute (CPERI, Thessaloniki, Greece), a lumping model was developed for the prediction of the FCC product distribution. The lumped reaction network involved five general lumps (gas oil, gasoline, coke, liquefied product gas, and dry gas) to simulate the cracking reactions and to predict the gas oil conversion and the product distribution. The paths of catalyst deactivation were studied and a selective deactivation model was adopted that enhances the fundamentality and accuracy of the lumping scheme. The hypothesis of selective catalyst deactivation was found to improve the product slates prediction. Models with different assumptions were examined, regarding the behavior of the catalyst, as deactivated, and its effect on the reactions of the lumping scheme. A large database of experiments, performed in the FCC pilot plant of CPERI was used to verify the performance of the models in steady state unit operation. The simulation results depict the importance of incorporating selective catalyst deactivation functions in FCC lumping models.