Pyrolysis reaction mechanism for industrial naphtha cracking furnaces

The tough market situation for ethylene production; has accelerated the dev elopment of a more rigorous and reliable cracking model. However, thermal c racking of naphtha has such numerous reaction routes and intermediate radic als and molecules that the detailed reaction mechanism has not yet been det ermined. This research is aimed at developing a rigorous but practical reac tion mechanism for an industrial cracker model. First, the reaction mechani sm set for naphtha cracking is generated on the basis of major reaction cla sses in pyrolysis and feed components. To reduce the computational load, th e reaction mechanism set is reduced using the eigenvalue-eigenvector decomp osition method. To compensate for the uncertainty in the kinetic parameters for-a plant, the mechanism is customized based on the results of a sensiti vity analysis. The constructed reaction mechanism can be used to optimize t he operating conditions of the naphtha cracker by precise estimation of the production yield of a given naphtha sample with a manageable computational load and flexibility toward industrial practices.