Commissioning Lab Scale Circulating Fluidized Bed for Evaluating Commercial Scale FCC Catalyst, Additives, and Operating Conditions to Support Ever Changing Feedstocks

Fluidized catalytic cracking units are the heart of the modern refinery.  The influx of tight oil and heavy oil are causing refiners to rethink how they operate FCC units to meet yield and throughput requirements.  While conventional bench scale FCC lab-scale testing units are used for evaluating catalysts and feedstocks, careful correlation or previous knowledge of commercial operation units is critical to determine scale-up factors.  A larger laboratory scale circulating fluidized bed system allows for more throughput and process operating conditions that can be tested.  Lab scale (~1 L/hr product) circulating fluidized bed commissioning and operating data is evaluated to identify scale-up factors and modelling as a more robust tool for predicting FCC yields with different feedstocks, catalysts, additives, and operating conditions.