Modeling and simulation of a hydrocracking unit

Hydrocracking is used in the petroleum industry to convert low quality feed stocks into high valued transportation fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. The aim of the present work is to develop a rigorous steady state two-dimensional mathematical model which includes conservation equations of mass and energy for simulating the operation of a hydrocracking unit. Both the catalyst bed and quench zone have been included in this integrated model. The model equations were numerically solved in both axial and radial directions using Matlab software. The presented model was tested against a real plant data in Egypt. The results indicated that a very good agreement between the model predictions and industrial values have been reported for temperature profiles, concentration profiles, and conversion in both radial and axial directions at the hydrocracking unit. Simulation of the quench zone conversion and temperature profiles in the quench zone was also included and gave a low deviation from the actual ones. In concentration profiles, the percentage deviation in the first reactor was found to be 9.28 % and 9.6% for the second reactor. The effect of several parameters such as: Pellet Heat Transfer Coefficient, Effective Radial Thermal Conductivity, Wall Heat Transfer Coefficient, Effective Radial Diffusivity, and Cooling medium (quench zone) has been included in this study. The variation of Wall Heat Transfer Coefficient, Effective Radial Diffusivity for the near-wall region, gave no remarkable changes in the temperature profiles. On the other hand, even small variations of Effective Radial Thermal Conductivity, affected the simulated temperature profiles significantly, and this effect could not be compensated by the variations of the other parameters of the model