Gasoline, Kerosene and diesel are the important fuels, all those are sourcing from Petroleum Refining. Petroleum is usually named as “Blood of Industry”, but it is hardly used as above fuel directly, it must be re-processed to gasoline, kerosene or diesel for further human using. FCC Fluid catalytic cracking is the most important convert method for Petroleum to fuel gasoline, kerosene or diesel in refining plants.

Almost everyone knows that FCC is the key secondary processing unit of Petroleum reforming and the profitable unit in Refining plants. The status of FCC unit in refineries is declining caused by the hitting of Hydrogenation cracking technology development. As well as the pressure of environment protection & additional value increasing, how to improve the FCC process to keep it profitable becomes more and more urgent. And now FCC process meet two main problems.

Firstly, challenge of regenerated flue gas treatment.

The regenerated flue gas means the exhaust gas after fluidized bed regenerator. In addition to the acid gas such as CO2, there are also plenty of catalyst particles, which are easy to block and wear downstream heat exchangers and pump valves. Due to the high temperature and large volume of the regeneration flue gas, it is very difficult to completely remove the catalyst particles directly at the outlet of the regenerator.

Secondly, problem of the oil slurry treatment

The oil slurry is a by-product with very special properties produced during the catalytic cracking process. A large number of condensed aromatic hydrocarbons with short side chain in the slurry are used to produce High-quality raw materials for high value-added products such as carbon black, needle coke, carbon fiber, rubber softeners and filler oils, plasticizers, asphalt, and heat transfer oil, but deep processing requires low content of solid catalyst particles, the actual amounts of particles usually made the oil slurry restricted.

Currently, many oil refining plants in China are cooperating with Shinkai to solve above problems, based on our rich engineering experiences in high temperature gas-particles removal and residual oil filtration.

Treatment of regenerated flue gas, the particles can be removed by Shinkai’s high-temperature gas-solid on-line blowback filtration system. At present, in some more harsh operating conditions, Shinkai’s same series filters have been successfully operated for many years without any manual operation and after-sales maintenance, and pressure drop stable at 3-5kpa.

For the gas-solid on-line filter is suitable for continuous filtration operation system, filter is organized by several filter elements groups together, and can be cleaned by pulse jet device successively without dismantle filter equipment. The inside filter elements sintered metal filter cartridges are completely manufactured by Shinkai, and the total length could reach to 3 meter, and micron grade or pore size could be higher to 0.8 micron grade, with higher strength than ceramic material elements.

Treatment of oil slurry, it is difficult to filter the catalytic oil slurry, because there is a large amount of colloid, which will block the filter elements. Through continuous exploration and pilots, Shinkai developed a set of oil slurry purification crossflow filtration system, which can reduce the content of catalyst in the oil slurry from 4000ppm to 30ppm. The crossflow filter can self-clean the gum and filter cake on the inside surface of the filter element, which is not easy to be blocked for filter elements. At present, this system has been successfully used in a scaled state-owned refinery in China. The solid content of the filtered oil slurry is less than 2ppm, which increasing the possibility for further processing of the oil slurry.

As the crossflow filter, which offers inside-out filtration way and has the characteristic of continuous filtration cycle through cross flow. Material traverse both ends opened metal membrane element also called sinter metal filter cartridge, which are totally manufactured by Shinkai filter, with outside diameter around OD19mm to OD25mm, max length to 3 meters, micron grade could reach to 1 micron.

Currently the slurry oil from FCC unit could be used in Hydrogenation reactor, Needle coke, Carbon fiber, Marine fuel. 

If you have questions about FCC unit regeneration flue gas and oil slurry filtration, feel free to contact our application department. Or fill the datasheet and forward to us for further designing.