6-Lump kinetic model for a commercial vacuum gas oil hydrocracker

Abstract

A 6-lump kinetic model, including a catalyst decay function for hydrocracking of vacuum gas oil in a commercial plant, is proposed. The model considers vacuum gas oil (VGO) and unconverted oil, having boiling point higher than 380-°C (380+°C) as one lump. Other lumps are diesel (260-380-°C), kerosene (150-260-°C), heavy naphtha (90-150-°C), light naphtha (40-90-°C) and gases (40-°C) as products. Initially, a kinetic network with thirty coefficients is considered, but following an evaluation using measured data and order of magnitude analysis, mainly the route passes of converting middle distillates to naphtha lumps are omitted; thus the number of kinetic coefficients is reduced to eighteen. This result is consistent with the reported characteristics of amorphous catalyst, which has the tendency to produce more distillates than naphtha. By using catalyst decay function in the kinetic model and replacing days on stream with a noble term, called accumulated feed, the prediction of the final approach during 1.5 years is in good agreement with the actual commercial data. The average absolute deviation (AAD%) of the model is less than 5% for all main products. If the residue or unconverted VGO is considered, the error only increases to 6.94% which is still acceptable for a commercial model. The results also confirm that the hydrocracking of VGO to upgraded products is represented better by a second order reaction.