A Novel Radial-Flow, Spherical Packed Bed Reactor for the Hydrocracking Process

Abstract

Hydrocracking (HC) is becoming a more important process in refineries owing to increasing demand for gasoline and jet fuel in comparison with diesel and home heating oils. In a commercial hydrocracking unit, tubular fixed bed reactors (TR) are commonly used. Some disadvantages of these reactors are pressure drop across the tube, high manufacturing costs, and low production capacity. These drawbacks can be solved by using a novel radial-flow, spherical packed bed reactor (SR). The aim of this work is to consider a radial-flow spherical packed bed reactor as an alternative for the tubular packed bed reactor in the HC process and compare the packed beds through important parameters such as pressure drop, yield of products, and temperature profile. The calculations showed that the pressure drop in the spherical reactor is negligible in comparison to that of the conventional tubular reactor. It is shown that by using more catalyst in the SR, the yield of more economical products could be well increased, but do...