MODELLING AND SIMULATION OF A REFINERY FLUID CATALYTIC CRACKING UNIT RISER

Abstract

The purpose of this work" is to model and simulate the Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit (FCCU) riser of a refinery having Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company (KRPC) Kaduna as a study. The unit's operation is cracking of heavy gasoil (VGO) to light weight oils in the presence of catalyst (zeolite). The method employed involves the collection of . operating conditions, feed stock stream analysis data from the refmery which was processed in order to obtain mass fractions of the representative specie involved in the cracking reactions . . A. model equation ~as obtained and simulated using Comsol Multiphysics software. Furthermore mass ;irid energy balance were carried out. The results of the simulation of the model showed a good agreement with the experimental results. In addition to gases imd oiis, gasoline obtained was 54% by weight fraction. The result obtained from the simulaiion was close to the data obtained from KRPC as well as res1Jlts from other researchers .. Thus the model obtained can be used for the simulation of crudes other than the Nigerian crude and the computational software used is recommended for the optimization of process units.