Simulation And Modeling Of Naphtha Catalytic Reforming Process

Catalytic reforming process is one of the most important chemical process, it deals with naphtha to produce aromatic hydrocarbon with low molecular weight and gasoline of high octane number as well as hydrogen, the by-product, along with catalyst. Hydrogen is needed in many different chemical processes, such as catalytic cracking and purification of raw oil. Catalytic reforming process supplies aromatic hydrocarbon to industry, offers gasoline of high octane number to the gas industry, and provides hydrogen to kinds of chemical process. It can be said that catalytic reforming process plays an important role in chemical industry. As oil further processing goes by, we should pay more and more attention to catalytic reforming process. To make a close study of catalytic reforming process, the catalytic reforming reactor is intensively analyzed in this paper.This paper gives brief introduction of catalytic reforming process and reviews the history of it both domestic and overseas, compares the advantages and disadvantages of general process simulation and dedicated process simulation, analysises the elements of catalytic reforming process, and points out the importance of process simulation. It consists of many different reactions in catalytic reforming process, and many of them can not be defined, this paper elaborates reaction mechanism of the varies reactions. There are many differences between diverse technologies about catalytic reforming process, the three parts of the technology that could not be ignored are Pretreatment of raw parts, Catalytic reforming section and Product stable part. The first part aims at the purification of raw oil, avoiding the inactivation of catalyst, the second one is the most important one of the three, it is closely bound up with the results of the whole catalytic reforming process, and the level of the last part indicates the purity of the products. Each one of the three parts should get our enough attentiveness.On account of the complicated raw oil, the22lumping model has been made depending on the lumping theory. The feedstock oil is divided into finite virtual pseudocomponents C6、C7、C8、C9+.Rreactants and products that with less than5carbon are treated as one total lump C5-. Thus a22lumped modle comes out under the direction of lumping theory. The main reactions of catalytic reforming are listed as follows:cracking reactions, paraffin isomerization, paraffin dehydrogenation and cyclization, naphthene dehydrogenation and aromatization. In this paper, reaction kinetics are discussed, and mathematical models are built for all the units of the whole catalytic reforming device, the simulating software of catalytic reforming process is accomplished. And the simulation of reactor is emphasized. The simulating software possesses plenty of functions, the main functions of the simulating software are the predictions of octane number of gasoline and temperature drop in the reactor. The software also provides the composition of products and the contents of different aromatic hydrocarbons, besides the aromatic latent and the yield of the catalytic reforming process can be predicted as well.The simulation results of the whole catalytic reforming match well with the reality, both the composition of products and the temperature drop, and different aromatic hydrocarbons are showed out clearly, so it can not only be used as the training tool for operators but also can provide theoretical basis for the update of process and technology and the adjustment of control plan.