Modeling the effect of pressure and temperature on the hydrocracking of heavy crude oil by the continuous kinetic lumping approach

The effect of space velocity, temperature and pressure on hydrocracking of heavy crude oil at moderate reaction conditions was modeled by the continuous kinetic lumping approach. Experimental data obtained at space velocity of 1.5, 0.5 and 0.33 h^-1, varying the temperature from 380 to 420 °C and pressure from 6.9 to 9.8 MPa were used to obtain the optimal set of model parameters. Different functionalities were proposed to correlate the values of the parameters with pressure and temperature. The developed correlations were used in the continuous kinetic lumping model to predict distillation curves of the hydrocracked products at different reaction conditions.