Investigation of the Effect of Fluidization on Alkane Catalytic Cracking in Fluidized Bed Reactor By High Temperature ECT Measurement System

Ethylene and propylene are important chemical raw materials. Alkane cracking is one of the major rountes for olefins production. At present, thermal cracking of alkane has been widely used in commercial olefins plant, which normally requires reaction temperature higher than 800 ^oC, and is considered as one of the most energy consuming processes in chemical industrial sector. Catalytic cracking technology can effectively reduce the alkane reaction temperature and on-purpose produce light olefins. Because of the rapid deactivation of catalyst caused by coke deposition, fluidized bed has been regarded as the well suitable reactor for catalytic cracking. However, the catalyst fluidization in fluidized bed reactor could significantly alter the reaction performance. Own to the lack of efficient high temperature measurement technology for fluidized bed, the influence of fluidization on the alkane conversion and product selectivit under real reaction conditions has not been understood yet.

In our laboratory a high temperature ECT system has been developed for fluidized bed measurment. The high temperature ECT system includes a specially designed high temperature electrode (working temperature above 600^oC) and the corresponding algorithm. By use of the high temperature ECT measurement system, we monitored the catalytic cracking reaction of alkanes and investigated the influence of fluidization conditions on the reaction performance.