RDR eReactor Pilot for electrification of steam hydrocarbon cracking process

Aanleiding

Climate change and the need for CO2 reductions are the number one topic in the world today. Ten thousand scientists just recently signed the Climate Emergency Declaration. Global and domestic conferences are held to discuss and agree about the politics and measures concerning the issue.

The same topic has high priority in the European Union, the Netherlands, and the petrochemical industry. The petrochemical industry delivers raw materials such as high-grade plastics for all kinds of applications. As a result, the industry has a large environmental footprint of annual 300 million tons (Mt) CO2 emissions, just for ethylene production, and has been under enormous pressure to “go green”.

One of the more polluting steps in the creation of commodities such as plastics is the steam cracking of fossil naphtha oil and other fossil hydrocarbon feedstocks. In this process, the building blocks of plastics are produced by heating hydrocarbon feedstocks in large gas-powered furnaces. This process has seen only stepwise improvements since its invention 100 years ago. As a result, joint industry/government innovation programs are calling for revolutionary technologies.

Doelstelling

Specific goals are:

1. To test operation of the RDR at pilot scale.
2. To demonstrate safety, reliability of the reactor, and olefin yields.
3. To further develop integration with relevant systems like decoking, control and safety automation, and cracked gas quench so that the technique can be fitted into existing steam cracking facilities.
4. To validate reactor design at pilot scale and improve modeling tools, computational fluid dynamics, and chemical reaction modeling for the design of the next phase.
5. To improve the steam cracking process.

Korte omschrijving

The pilot project will be carried out in two phases and several sub-phases.

The first test phase will focus on:

• Learning the dynamics of the pilot reactor and pilot plant.
• Naphtha steam cracking.
• Maintenance.
• Overall reliability and safety.
• Optimization of processes and product yield with naphtha as feedstock.
• Data collection for validating reactor models.

The second test phase will focus on:

• Optimization of the process and product yields with ethane and liquefied petroleum gases (LPG) as feedstock.
• Energy usage and further improvement of maintenance, overall reliability, and safety.
• Data collection for developing reactor models.

Results will be analyzed and used to improve the RDR with the help of leading scientists in the fields of aerodynamics, fluid dynamics, and chemical modeling from the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, and Ghent. The data obtained from these tests will be used to prepare computer models for the process and reactor aerodynamic and mechanical design, optimizing yields and operating conditions, and for future developments of reactor concepts.

Resultaat

The project will develop the RDR technology at pilot scale (400 kg/hr). The project will deliver updated models and design for the next demonstration phase (8-10 t/h naphtha), which will be built at an industrially relevant scale and be connected to the operational cracking process.

Expected typical industrial size RDR eReactor is 20-40 t/h hydrocarbon feed, while a reference industrial scale conventional steam cracker furnace is 30-80 tons/hr. By using extensive analytics and instrumentation in the reactor for different measurements, reactor models will be created for accurate product yield estimates and computational fluid dynamic (CFD) models for optimizing reactor aerodynamic design.

In this project, the target is to learn and create reliable start-up and shut-down processes, normal operating procedures, test decoking processes, safety interlocking principles, and other process safety issues. All the studies, software tools, methods, and processes that result from the pilot tests will be necessary in the process of introducing the new technology to ethylene producers, technology manufacturers, and other stakeholders, and for the design of the industrial scale demonstration unit.