Improving the Hydrodynamics and Heat Transfer in Crude Oil Catalytic Cracking via a Novel Catalyst Formulation

Summary

Our work investigated a method to improve the hydrodynamics and heat transfer in a multizone fluidized bed reactor for directly transforming crude oil into chemicals. We fabricated a novel catalyst by spray-drying and incorporating silicon carbide into the formulation, which has good microstructure, fluidization, and thermal conductivity properties. We evaluated this catalyst with a commercial benchmark for catalyst circulation and heat transfer by non–reactive CPFD simulations. Optimal operating conditions and catalyst loading values were suggested for the desired intermediate product of direct catalytic cracking in crude oil–to–chemicals.

About the Speaker

Isa Al Aslani is an Aramco-sponsored PhD candidate at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), where he works on developing kinetic models for crude oil cracking. Before that, he was working on the crude oil-to-chemicals project at Aramco Research Center at KAUST with a one-year internship as a process engineer in the Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) unit at Saudi Aramco Total Refining and Petrochemicals complex (SATORP).