Kinetic model development and simulation of simultaneous hydrodenitrogenation and hydrodemetallization of crude oil in trickle bed reactor

A three-phase heterogeneous model based on two-film theory is developed to describe the behaviour of crude oil hydroprocessing in a pilot-plant trickle bed reactor (TBR) system. The hydroprocessing reactions have been modelled by power law kinetics with respect to nitrogen, vanadium and nickel compounds, and with respect to hydrogen. In this work, the gPROMS (general PROcess Modelling System) package has been used for modelling, simulation and parameter estimation via optimization. The model simulations results were found to agree well with the experiments carried out in a wide range of the studied operating conditions. The model is employed to predict the concentration profiles of hydrogen, nitrogen, vanadium and nickel along the catalyst bed length in three phases.