Methodology for extracting local constants from petroleum cracking flows

摘要

A methodology provides for the extraction of local chemical kinetic model constants for use in a reacting flow computational fluid dynamics (CFD) computer code with chemical kinetic computations to optimize the operating conditions or design of the system, including retrofit design improvements to existing systems. The coupled CFD and kinetic computer code are used in combination with data obtained from a matrix of experimental tests to extract the kinetic constants. Local fluid dynamic effects are implicitly included in the extracted local kinetic constants for each particular application system to which the methodology is applied. The extracted local kinetic model constants work well over a fairly broad range of operating conditions for specific and complex reaction sets in specific and complex reactor systems. While disclosed in terms of use in a Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) riser, the inventive methodology has application in virtually any reaction set to extract constants for any particular application and reaction set formulation. The methodology includes the step of: (1) selecting the test data sets for various conditions; (2) establishing the general trend of the parametric effect on the measured product yields; (3) calculating product yields for the selected test conditions using coupled computational fluid dynamics and chemical kinetics; (4) adjusting the local kinetic constants to match calculated product yields with experimental data; and (5) validating the determined set of local kinetic constants by comparing the calculated results with experimental data from additional test runs at different operating conditions.