Simulation of imbalance reduction between two reactors in an ethylene dichloride cracker

Abstract The simulation of ethylene dichloride (EDC) cracker was carried out to estimate the imbalances in the reactor passes and to suggest a way to achieve the optimum operability. From the coupled simulation between furnace and multi-reactor passes, a scheme for the direct operational control of an EDC cracking process was suggested. For this purpose, a new terminology referred to as the quantitative imbalance and operation modification factor ( α ) were defined and the operating conditions of furnace required to minimize the imbalances were investigated with computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The calculated values for heat flux showed that an imbalance in heat transfer exists between two reactors. Conditions of high thermal efficiency were achieved in a value of α = 1.15 . From this result, it is clear that an operating window between the optimum thermal efficiency and the minimum imbalance exists. When the value of α is 1.3, the average imbalance factor at a local point, conversion at the outlet of reactor and mass flow rate reached an optimum point in this simulation study. The method and concept proposed here will provide a basis for the estimation of the optimum operation conditions for other multi-reactor pass crackers.