Question

An old oil refinery is to be upgraded. Currently the vacuum distillation column “bottoms” (vacuum residual) are sold as heavy fuel oil. A catalytic cracker is tobe installed to process the vacuum residual and extract more “white products” such as gasoline and kerosene. Steam is to be used to heat the vacuum residual from 120 C to 190 C using a shell and tube heat exchanger prior to feeding the residual to the proposed catalytic cracker.The vacuum residual has a specific heat capacity of 1.88 kJ/kg C and the design flow rate is 100 tonne/hour.

Calculate the heatexchangerduty in kW assuming a 5% heat loss from the shell. Determine the steam pressure and flowrate required.

Answer 1