Petrochemical Processes 2010 Home Process Categories Company Index

Ethylene Feed Dilution Cracked 6 9 C2–

steam gas H2

HP steam
Application: To produce polymer-grade ethylene and propylene by ther- comp-
8
mal cracking of hydrocarbon fractions — from ethane through naphtha ression
up to hydrocracker residue. Byproducts are a butadiene-rich C4 stream, 3 5 12
2
10 11
a C6 – C8 gasoline stream rich in aromatics and fuel oil. Sour gas
1 removal
Description: Fresh feedstock and recycle streams are preheated and C3+
Fuel oil 4
cracked in the presence of dilution steam in highly selective PyroCrack
H2
furnaces (1). PyroCrack furnaces are optimized with respect to residence Mixed C4s CH4
Propylene Ethylene
time, temperature and pressure profiles for the actual feedstock and the
required feedstock flexibility, thus achieving the highest olefin yields.
Furnace effluent is cooled in transfer line exchangers (2), generating HP 18 15 16 17 13 14
Pyrolysis Propane Ethane
steam, and by direct quenching with oil for liquid feedstocks. recycle
gasoline C4+ recycle
The cracked gas stream is cooled and purified in the primary
fractionator (3) and quench water tower (5). Waste heat is recovered by
a circulating oil cycle, generating dilution steam (4) and by a water cycle
(5) to provide heat to reboilers and process heaters. The cracked gas hydrocarbon condensates from the hot section, forms an aromatic-
from the quench tower is compressed (6) in a 4- or 5-stage compressor rich gasoline product.
and dried in gas and liquid adsorbers (8). CO2 and H2S are removed in a
caustic-wash system located before the final compressor stage. Economics: Ethylene yields vary between 25%, 35%, 45% and 83% for
The compressed cracked gas is further cooled (9) and fed to the gas oils, naphtha, LPG and ethane respectively. The related specific ener-
recovery section: front-end deethanizer (10), isothermal front-end C2 gy consumption range is 6,000/5,400/4,600 and 3,800 kcal/kg ethylene.
hydrogenation (11), cold train (12), demethanizer (13) and the heat- Typical installation costs for a world-scale ISBL gas (naphtha) cracker are
pumped low-pressure ethylene fractionatior (14), which is integrated 800 (1,100) US$/ton installed ethylene capacity.
with the ethylene refrigeration cycle. This well-proven Linde process is Commercial plants: Over 20 million tons of ethylene are produced in
highly optimized, resulting in high flexibility, easy operation, low energy more than 50 plants worldwide. Many plants have been expanded in
consumption, low investment costs and long intervals between major capacity up to 50% and more.
turnarounds (typically five years). Recent awards for world-scale ethylene plants include Borouge 2
The C3 from the deethanizer bottoms (10) is depropanized (15), and 3 (1.5 million metric tpy each) in Abu Dhabi.
hydrogenated (16) to remove methyl acetylene and propadiene (16)
and fractionated to recover polymer grade propylene. C4 components Licensor: Linde AG - CONTACT
are separated from heavier components in the debutanizer (18) to
recover a C4 product and a C5 stream. The C5, together with the
Copyright © 2010 Gulf Publishing Company. All rights reserved.