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ABSTRACT
Fluid Catalytic Cracking unit (FCCU) is regarded as the heart of the contemporary refinery process. While FCC is mostly used to increase the production of gasoline, it also has the ability to give different products like Propylene and butylene under different conditions. The performance of FCC unit has a significant impact on the overall profitability of refinery operations. Therefore, dramatic economic benefits will result from any improvement in operation of FCC units. This work describes the effects of pressure variation on fluid catalytic cracking of Naphtha using Aspen HYSYS. This was accomplished by using Aspen HYSYS (Version 11), a chemical process software to systematically adjust the reactor’s pressure and temperature variables in the FCCU. Process engineers can handle simulation, design, optimization, control, analysis and other tasks related to complex plants, with this mix of modern technological hardware and developed software. In this research project, a basic refinery was designed and Naphtha from the distillation column was used as feed in the FCC unit. The plant data was taken from the plant data gotten from Ali et al with a few modifications made to ensure accurate simulation. The effects of variation of certain parameters (Pressure and Temperature) on the product yield was also examined. The result from the simulation concludes that increase in reactor pressure has a little or no significant effect on the product yield. Increase in reactor pressure, results in slight drop in cracked naphtha production, negligible drop in LCO production and slight increase in Propylene and Butylene production. It is also observed that a rice in reactor temperature will increase the extent of catalytic cracking resulting in dramatic increase in product yield (Propylene, Butylene, & cracked naphtha) while there is a decrease in the yield of Light Cycle Oil (LCO). The result shows that the reactor would operate at optimum pressure of range of (520 – 540)0C.
