Optimizing Ethylene Production by Implementing a Catalyst-Based Coating

Coking in ethylene plants is one of the greatest barriers to process optimization and increased product yield. A catalyst-based furnace tube coating could help surpass this historic limitation.

Ethylene has the largest global production volume of any organic chemical. It is a critical building block for a vast array of materials that are foundational to our modern world. It is produced primarily via the steam cracking of hydrocarbons, where heat is used to break saturated hydrocarbons into smaller, often unsaturated, hydrocarbons in large industrial furnaces. This occurs at very high temperatures — around 800°C — and, thus, the process is highly energy- and water-intensive. During this heating process, the heated fluid flows through pipes that are located in two different sections of the furnace: the radiant and convection sections. In the radiant section, natural gas burners come into direct contact with pipes to heat the process fluid, while the convection section captures heat from the fluegas before it is released. Because of the intense heat found in the radiant section, this section suffers from the most severe coking. However, both sections experience coking to the extent that it can cause serious heat transfer loss as well as wear and damage. Therefore, improving plant operability, productivity, and reliability by reducing coking is critical to making these processes sustainable and profitable.

One of the primary obstacles preventing optimized plant performance is the formation of coke. This carbonaceous deposit forms inside furnace tubes as the undesirable byproduct of the cracking reactions. Coking can decrease efficiency and cause equipment to fail, making the elimination of coking an important aspect of operating an ethylene plant.

This article discusses the performance of a novel anti-coking coating technology in mitigating the negative impact of coke deposition, and thus, helping to achieve the aforementioned goals...