A Novel Strategy for Simulating the Main Fractionator of Delayed Cokers by Separating the De-superheating Process

• Published in: Chinese journal of chemical engineering Vol. 21; no. 3; pp. 285 - 294
• Main Author: 雷杨 张冰剑 侯小琼 陈清林
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.03.2013
• Subjects: de-superheating process; delayed coking; Diesel; Distillation; fractionator; Natural gas; Refineries; Simulation; Strategy; Superheating; Trays; 分离; 分馏; 原油蒸馏装置; 延迟焦化装置; 模拟策略; 流化催化裂化; 热过程; 运行参数; de-superheating process; simulation; delayed coking; fractionator
• ISSN: 1004-9541; 2210-321X
• DOI: 10.1016/S1004-9541(13)60472-4

Delayed coking is an important process in refinery to convert heavy residue oils from crude distillation units （CDUs） and fluid catalytic cracking units （FCCUs） into dry gas, liquefied petroleum gas （LPG）, gasoline, die- sel, gas oils and cokes. The main fractionator, separating superheating reaction vapors from the coke drums into lighter oil products, involves a de-superheating section and a rectifying section, and couldn＇t be simulated as a whole column directly because of non-eouilibrium in the de-suoerheatine section. It is verv imoortant to correctlv simulate the main fractionator for operational parameter and energy-use optimization of delayed cokers. This paper discusses the principle of de-superheating processes, and then proposes a new simulation strategy. Some key issues such as composition prediction of the reaction vapors, selection of thermodynamic methods, estimation of tray efficiency, etc. are discussed. The proposed simulation approach is applied to two industrial delayed cokers with typical technological processes in a Chinese refinery by using PRO/II. The simulation results obtained are well consistent with the actual operation data, which indicates that the presented approach is suitable to simulate the main fraction- ators of delayed cokers or other distillation columns consisting of de-superheating sections and rectifying sections.