Maximization of conversion in fluid catalytic cracker

Fluid Catalytic Cracking is the dominant technology for converting high molecular weight hydrocarbons into more commercially valuable products such as LPG and gasoline. About 45 percent of worldwide gasoline production comes from FCC process and its ancillary units. Despite being a very mature technology, continued development is vital due to growing demand for refinery products combined with the decreasing quality of crude oils and tighter product specifications arising from environmental constraints. Due to its multivariable and nonlinear characteristics, however, how to best control and optimize the FCC unit is considered a challenging problem. This work presents an optimization approach for FCC unit profit based on the prices of Gasoline, Propane, Butane, and Light Cycle Oil/Heavy Cycle Oil (LCO/HCO), for the maximization of FCC unit profit via mathematical programming. To carry out the optimization process first, the mathematical model was developed for the yields of FCC process different process units. Then, the set of on the the regression models provided by Stratiev and Dinkov[11] were used as model constraints. This mathematical model was tested on different data sets to show the effectiveness of the model in providing the optimal FCC process setting for different data sets, the data sets represent different prices of the FCC products, namely Gasoline, Propane, Butane, and Light Cycle Oil/Heavy Cycle Oil (LCO/HCO).