Ethylene by Cracking: Research Proposals
February 20th, 1969
Group II Research Note, ICI Central Instrument Research Lab.
S F Bush
Summary
This document contains proposals for a research programme to be carried out at CIRL, Bozedown House, on the manufacture of ethylene by cracking hydrocarbon feedstocks. The programme is designed to cover the cracking and quench sections and can be enlarged to include natural gas cracking as well as naphtha cracking if this is required. Proposals are made for the construction of a kinetic model based on a programme of experimentation, the setting up of a detailed mathematical model of the cracker and quench sections of the process, investigation of the rate and nature of carbonaceous deposits in these sections, and optimisation of process design based on the results of the foregoing elements of the programme. A short series of kinetics experiments on the cracking of propane as a simple test feedstock have been carried out in the Laboratory’s jet-mixed reactors in order to test the feasibility of a longer programme. The kinetic results have been incorporated into a first-attempt computer model of a cracker tube.