Hydrodynamics of industrial scale FCCU stripper

Abstract

Stripper is an important component of a fluid catalytic cracking (FCCU) unit. It strips and recovers the adsorbed/deposited light hydrocarbons on the catalyst particle surface using steam in a counter current flow process. The common flow problems encountered in an FCC stripper unit include channelling, bridging and maldistribution. In this work the hydrodynamics of industrial scale FCC Strippers was studied and investigated using 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations and experiments. The CFD and experimental studies showed that internals and inlet configurations play a vital role in determining the hydrodynamics of the Stripper unit.