The hydrocarbon processing industry manufactures many products critical to a modern mobile society, such as gasoline. One of the most important petrochemical operations is the Fluidized Catalytic Cracking (FCC) Unit.  This is a Circulating fluidized bed (CFB) design connecting two principal components: reactor and regenerator.  Barracuda is being used to design and optimize process conditions in regenerators, such as air flow and spargers, bed depth and catalyst ‘fines’ content in regenerators, some over 50 feet in diameter.  For the reactor, Barracuda can handle the 3D gas-solids flow in the riser, including oil injection and core annular behavior with backmixing. Barracuda can assist with improvements to the riser terminator device (RTD), rough-cut cyclones, disengagement, strippers, standpipes and cyclone reliability.

Reactor → Issues
Oil spray injection → location / orientation / number
Riser → vapor & catalyst residence times / reactions / backmixing at walls / coking
Disengagement Region → RTD / cyclones / stripper / transfer lines

Riser Phenomena
Liquid droplet spray injection and coating of catalyst
Core-annular flow
Backwashing at walls
Residence times distribution
Particle size effects

Regenerator → Issues
Spent cat return line → terminator
Air sparger → fluidization quality / locations / sizing
Cyclones → efficiency / reliability / wear / dipleg flooding
Fluid Bed→ gas/solids contact efficiency / effect of ‘fines’

Regenerator Phenomena
Gas bypassing or streaming in the bed
Bed average density, DP/L
Elutriation rate / PSD
TDH / freeboard densities
Catalyst circulation rates, residence time
Withdrawal well air injection
Chemical Reactions, NOx emissions