canola oil/glycerol mixtures in a continously operated FCC pilot plant And comparison with vacuum gas oil/glycerol Mixtures

Publication date: Available online 4 June 2019Source: Chemical Engineering and Processing - Process IntensificationAuthor(s): Marco Büchele, Matthias Swoboda, Alexander Reichhold, Wolfgang HoferAbstractCatalytic cracking of glycerol/canola oil mixtures was conducted in a continuously operated FCC pilot plant at TU Wien. The range of mixtures was from pure canola oil to pure glycerol with several mixtures in between. The aim of this research was to prove if the addition of glycerol to the feed can be feasible and to determine changes in product quality. The set riser temperature was 550 °C and the selected feedrate was 2.7 kg/h. As bed material a zeolite-based commercially available FCC-equilibrium catalyst was used. Utilizing a 7 lump model the products were characterized. Viable products like cracking gas (C1 – C4) and the gasoline lump (paraffins, olefins and aromatics) were analyzed in detail. The experiments showed that product distribution was mainly dependent on the glycerol content in the feed. The gas, gasoline and LCO + residue lump decreased dramatically. Non-viable products like water, coke and carbon oxides, on the other hand, increased significantly. Hence, it was concluded that under set conditions and parameters glycerol might only be beneficial to the FCC process in small admixtures because of possible control coke-make. Additionally, a comparison was made between experiments using canola oil/glycerol mixtures and VGO/glycerol mixtures.Graphical ab...

Source: Chemical Engineering and Processing: Process Intensification - June 5, 2019 Category: Chemistry Source Type: research