Modeling and simulation of ethane cracker reactor using Aspen Plus

The main aim of the work was to investigate if simple reactor blocks could be combined to adequately represent complex reactor configurations; with the objectives of selecting an appropriate reaction scheme, creating a working simulation and validating the results obtained from the simulation. An ethane cracker reactor is simulated using Aspen Plus, for a molecular reaction scheme, made up of seven reactions and eight hydrocarbon components; using the kinetics and reactor geometrics. Several assumptions were made such that the fired furnace reactor could be modeled as a series of two plug flow reactors using Aspen Plus. Modeling of a fired furnace reactor for the cracking of ethane is made difficult by the inherent separation between the convection and radiation sections; a difficulty which was overcome by separating the convection region and the radiation region of the fired furnace reactor into two simulations such that temperatures were solved for iteratively. A firebox simulation was created with the intent of finding the optimal fuel and air flow rates that would supply the fired furnace rector with the required 2490 kW; these flow rates were found to be 190 kmol hr−1 and 60 kmol hr−1.