SIM Suite Reactor Family

Our SIM family of detailed refinery and petrochemical reactor models gets a number of significant updates to their process technology, with many of the changes developed in collaboration between our R&D team, KBC Consultants and our clients. These changes help Petro-SIM reflect the latest trends in refining technology and you will continue to see further improvements in subsequent releases. This page gives you information on the key changes and you can review the complete list to see everything.

FCC-SIM

  • ZSM-5 Concentration Effect - Previous versions used a linear relationship between yields and the amount of ZSM-5 additive. In reality the effect is non-linear because naphtha paraffins and olefins are diminished by ZSM-5 cracking and the model now reflects this.
  • Nickel Passivation Effects - FCC-SIM now models use of Antimony-based additives to passivate the impact of nickel on the equilibrium catalyst activity, allowing you to specify either the passivator feed rate or concentration on ECAT as the target. You can tune the passivation effects through two new parameters on H2 Yield and Coking Rate, with the basic retention ratio between the passivator and ECAT being determined from calibration.
  • Improved heat of cracking determination for naphtha feeds together with better flexibility for handling naphtha feeds injected with or without other FCC feeds. The heat of reaction for naphtha cracking to C4- gases is now calculated based on the actual cracking rate rather than correlation resulting in improved matches to real operation.


DHTR-SIM - Distillate Hydrotreating

  • Improved kinetics for sulfur removal on ultra low sulfur diesel (ULSD) operations, with better feed fingerprinting coupled with new kinetic pathways. This technology better identifies and handles the very hard sulfur compounds such as 4,6-dimethyldibenzothiophene, considering the different reaction pathways.
  • Improved cold property response predictions across the model, building on work started in version 4.1. Considers cloud point, freeze point, pour point and viscosity, projecting the feed properties by boiling point onto the products.


Hydroprocessing - General

  • Added modelling of catalyst deactivation due to poisons such as silica and arsenic compounds. Modelling tracks build-up and breakthrough across any guard bed to consider impact on cycle length. The methodology is based on published research coupled with flexibility for tuning. The poison effect adds onto coking and/or metal deactivation effects to calculate the total impact. Silicon and Arsenic content are supported as standard refinery assay properties as part of this work.
  • Made a number of performance enhancements to improve execution time of models running to conversion, sulfur or nitrogen targets.

Delayed Coking - DC-SIM

  • Several new and improved product property predictions are now available:
    • Predict probability of Shot Coke based on feed sulfur and viscosity, recycle ratio and coke VCM
    • Improved coke HGI and VCM predictions, where former is a function of the Shot Coke probability
    • Added tracking of Iron and Sodium impurities in coke and the coker liquid products (mostly concentrated in coke)
  • Added technology to handle Foaming, predicting foam height and probability, taking anti-foaming agents into account. Use of anti-foams also leads to silica carryover to the liquid products where it can impact downstream operations.
  • Improved the yield response with regard to cracked feeds such as FCC Slurry Oils
  • Modified the Coke Drum VLE calculations so they are performed at the drum outlet conditions rather than at the liquid holdup conditions. the outlet temperature is actually lower due to cracking reactions in both the vapor and liquid phases.

The Delayed Coker changes result in several new calibration and tuning factors and as such, we recommend that reactors are recalibrated for use with Petro-SIM 5. The Coker Furnace operation available to DC-SIM licensees benefits from general improvements to our rigorous fired heater models described in the Heat Transfer topic.

Naphtha Reformer - REF-SIM

  • We have improved the Naphthene kinetics for C7+ carbon groups, separating the kinetics of 5 and 6 ring compounds. This better discriminates between yields for cracked versus straight run feedstocks. The model can estimate the 5/6 ring ratio in feeds based on feed type information but works most accurately where you can specify the cyclopentanes and cyclohexanes in the feed.
  • We have improved the model's ability to match measured end points for the reformate, which historically was limited by the heaviest carbon specified in the feed which is often not accurately known. In reality though, reformates are known to contain small amounts of heavy aromatics and polymerized material - the formation of these was not predicted by the model. We have corrected this by adding trans-alkylation reactions to the C10+ aromatics to increase the higher boiling compounds predicted form the model.
    • Trans-alkylation reactions for example convert C10 Aromatics to C9 and C11 species
    • There are new factors available for end point tuning