Modeling and Simulation of Propane Dehydrogenation Radial Flow Reactors and Investigating the Effect of Coke Formation

Due to the high demand in the petrochemical industry, catalytic dehydrogenation of paraffins has received much attention in recent years. Modeling and simulation of propane dehydrogenation radial flow reactors has been studied in this research. This process is performed in 4 moving bed radial flow reactors and intermediate heaters are used to supply reaction heat, and a feed heat exchanger. The mass and energy equations were solved simultaneously with the kinetic equations of the reactions, which of results of reactor simulations in Polymath V6 software with an mean relative error of 7.2% are in good agreement with industrial data. Also, the selectivity of propylene to propane in the fourth reactor was 53%. By modeling and simulating the reactors, it was found that due to the coking of the catalysts and the decrease in the activity of the catalysts in each reactor, the conversion and temperature drop in each reactor gradually decreased and the propane conversion rate in the first reactor was 61%, in the second reactor 15%. It decreases by 11% in the third reactor and 5% in the fourth reactor.