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Modelling coke formation in an industrial ethane‐cracking furnace for ethylene production
Author(s) -
Karimi Hadiseh,
Olayiwola Bolaji,
Farag Hany,
McAuley Kimberley B.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
the canadian journal of chemical engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.404
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1939-019X
pISSN - 0008-4034
DOI - 10.1002/cjce.23619
Subject(s) - coke , cracking , blast furnace , pyrolytic carbon , fluid catalytic cracking , coke strength after reaction , catalysis , metallurgy , ethylene , pyrolysis , materials science , chemistry , petroleum coke , organic chemistry , composite material
Abstract The development of a model for predicting coke formation in an industrial ethylene cracking furnace is described. Expressions for predicting the rates of catalytic and pyrolytic coke formation are developed and a differential equation is derived to predict changes in coke thickness with time and position. An expression is developed to account for a decline in the rate of catalytic coke formation with increasing thickness of the coke layer. The proposed coke model equations are used to extend a previously developed ethane pyrolysis furnace model that ignored coke. Three model parameters related to coke formation are estimated using industrial data to obtain reliable model predictions. Two of these parameters are coefficients that appear in the catalytic and pyrolytic coke formation rate expressions. The third is a characteristic‐length parameter used to reduce the rate of catalytic coke formation as the coke layer grows. The resulting dynamic model matches the industrial data well and can be used to simulate furnace operation and predict coke thickness profiles over a variety of the operating conditions, thereby helping process engineers who plan the decoking process.