Uneven distribution of particle flow in RFCC reactor riser

The uneven distribution of particle flow, i.e., a different particle mass flow rate in each outlet of the riser in residue fluidized catalytic cracking (RFCC) processes, is one major problem associated with commercial RFCC processes. This problem affects the formation of carbonaceous deposits in the secondary reactor cyclone, which incurs serious catalyst carryover in the fractionators. This study analyzes particle-fluid flow patterns in the riser, and diagnoses the uneven distribution of particle flow using a computational particle fluid dynamics (CPFD) method to solve this real industrial problem. Through this analysis, the effect of the number of feed injectors is investigated. The CPFD method, which has been developed to complement the Eulerian-Eulerian and Eulerian-Lagrangian methods, applies the Navier-Stokes equation for fluid phase and multi-phase-particle-in-cell (MP-PIC) models for particle phase. The particle flow distribution was found to vary by 15.5–18.7% at different outlets in the 1 injector case, which implies that the solid loading ratio in each cyclone is different, thereby affecting the separation efficiency of the cyclone and the formation of carbonaceous deposits. The uneven distribution of particle flow phenomena was identified, and the standard deviations of particle mass flow rates were evaluated for the cases of 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 12 injectors, and were found to be 7.52, 4.07, 2.66, 1.78, 2.85 and 3.82, respectively. From these results, the 6 injectors case was found to have a largely even particle flow distribution.