Thermal Stability of Gas Oil Hydrotreating Processes: Numerical Issues of the Matrix-Eigenvalue Approach Stabilité thermique de procédés d’hydrotraitement des gazoles : aspects numériques de l’approche par valeurs propres matricielles

Abstract

Processes carrying out exothermic reactions must ensure safe operating conditions to avoid uncontrolled thermal excursion, also known as runaway. Therefore, a thermal stability analysis is necessary to determine the safe and productive range of operating conditions of highly exothermic processes. Hydrotreating gas oil feeds consists mainly of hydrogenation reactions; processing highly unsaturated feeds such as light cycle oils can be highly exothermic. For this reason, a thermal stability study of this complex refining is performed. Perturbations theory has already been applied to carry out a thermal stability study of this process under dynamic conditions. This method consists in the perturbation of the hydrotreating reactor model and solution of the perturbed model in the form of an eigenvalue problem. The stability condition imposes that all perturbations must tend to zero when time tends to infinity. Some methodology and numerical aspects applying this theory and the effect on stability results are tackled in this work. The formalization of the perturbed model solution as a standard eigenvalue problem or as a generalized eigenvalue problem are presented. The computation of the Jacobian by a numerical approach or with the analytical expressions is also carried out. In both cases, results are compared and their influence on the stability/instability results is presented.