In 1949 appears first Fixed Bed Unit and in ’71 Continuous Catalyst Regeneration

Unit was released. The feed is a wide & various naphtha boiling hydrocarbons with
aromatics, naphthenes and paraffins, could be from thermal cracking units, crude
distillation and so one, but needs to be free of sulfur, nitrogen, halogen,
oxygenate compounds, metals and all the olefins shall be saturated to not
deactivate the noble catalyst – usually the max end point is 200C.

CCR main equipment:

1. Reactor: 3-4 stacked vessels operating at 3.5-10.0 barg & 510-550C (endothermic
process) with lower pressure drop, the catalyst is flowing from the top to bottom
encountering the feed at different temperature levels

2. Regenerator with main function to burn the hydrocarbons deposits from and to
prepare the catalyst for reaction, is divided in 5 zones (sections): regeneration
zone / reheat zone / Cl2 zone / drying zone and cooling

3. Catalyst transfer pipes from reactor the spent catalyst is transfer to

regenerator and from regenerator the ready to go catalyst is transfer back to
reactor. Is very important to separate the reactor and regenerator medium toa void
that hydrogen & hydrocarbons from reactor to enter in oxygen regenerator
environment and the O2 to pass to reactor – hazard is obvious!

4. Heaters: 3-4 fired heaters need to supply the necessary heat for reaction – the
feed is heated from 460-475C to 510-550C and are single pass low pressure drop
usually in the same box. The BWT is 900-960C and can be lowered by applying special
ceramic coating

5. Packinox: replace the combined feed HX due to higher heat recovery, lower layout
requirements / size and is present in new design or especially in revamped units.
Packinox is a special welded heat exchanger with the main drawback of fouling –
provision in design shall be implemented to overcome the mentioned aspect

6. Recycle gas compressor is a centrifugal type with turbine or electric motor

7. Reactor Air Cooler: provide the necessary temperature of reactor effluent (cool
down the fluid) to 55-60C by a single pass multitube design

8. Separator: L-V are split with vapor H2 rich gases sent to recycle compressor and
the liquid unstabilized reformate to Stabilizer

9. Stabilizer: fractionation tower removes from reformate the LPG and off gas with
the main product the C5+ or C6+ reformate. Downstream Stabilizer the Reformate
Splitter could be foreseen to prepare the feed for Aromatic Complex

10. Chloride Adsorbers: Cl2 is added to keep the catalyst acid function in
regenerator special zone and need to be removed from H2 as byproduct before to be
send to hydrogen refinery network – this is done by adsorbtion in 2 vessels filled
with promoted alumina.

Enjoy!

PS: Uop still the Best available tech on the market with Axens trying to catch-up
(the only competitor).