Optimum Product Yields Of Vacuum Distillation Unit From Petroleum Refinery Process

Vacuum distillation is employed on heavy petroleum fractions, with large applications on heavy and ultra-heavy crude processing, motivated by difficulties founded in processing these crudes at atmospheric pressure, due to the boiling range of the compounds in their compositions. The steady state and dynamic behavior of the system to define on-line optimization strategies and control was studied. To achieve this, a distillation vacuum column was established in a simulator with all auxiliary equipment, defining and characterizing feed and products, evaluating convergence criteria of the entire system in the steady state, followed by an optimization of the system. The dynamic behavior of the system was simulated to evaluate the impact of load changes, even in operational variables as in design variables. The steady state simulation allowed the consideration of the whole plant with the main auxiliary equipment, and provided the study of many conditions, as well as a guide to choose variables to be manipulated to achieve product requirements. Some blends of crudes were tested, and optimization in steady state was applied, according to energy consumption and product yield goals. This is an abstract of paper presented at the AIChE Spring National Meeting (Orlando, FL 4/24-26/2006)