Catalytic Reforming

Catalytic Reforming

1. Main raw materials:

Naphtha (light gasoline, chemical light oil, stabilized light oil), which is generally produced in oil refineries, and sometimes produced in stabilization stations of oil extraction plants. Good quality naphtha has low sulfur content and is close to colorless in color.

2. Main products:

High-octane gasoline, benzene, toluene, xylene and other products (these products are the main raw materials for the production of synthetic plastics, synthetic rubber, synthetic fibers, etc.), and a large amount of by-product hydrogen.

3. Basic Concepts

Reformation: The rearrangement of hydrocarbon molecules into a new molecular structure.

Catalytic reforming unit: using straight-run gasoline (namely naphtha) or mixed oil of secondary processed gasoline as raw material, under the action of catalyst (platinum or polymetallic), it undergoes dehydrocyclization, hydrocracking and isomerization The main purpose is to produce C6-C9 aromatic hydrocarbon products or high-octane gasoline, and the by-product hydrogen of reforming is used for thermal cracking and delayed coking for secondary processing. gasoline or diesel hydrorefining.

4. Production process

According to the basic principle of catalytic reforming, a complete set of reforming industrial equipment mostly includes two parts: raw material pretreatment and catalytic reforming. The reformer for the purpose of producing aromatics also includes two parts: aromatics extraction and aromatics rectification.

a. Raw material pretreatment

The feedstock is cut into the distillation range suitable for reforming requirements and the impurities that are detrimental to the catalyst are removed.

The pretreatment includes three parts: pre-dearsenic, pre-fractionation and pre-hydrogenation.

b. Catalytic reforming

Catalytic reforming is to use multi-metal (platinum rhenium, platinum iridium, platinum tin) catalysts to rearrange the molecules of the raw oil in the pretreated refined oil under certain temperature and pressure conditions to produce naphthenic dehydrogenation, aromatization The main reactions such as isomerization and isomerization are used to increase the production of aromatic hydrocarbons or increase the octane number of gasoline.

The reaction system processes widely used in industrial reformers can be divided into two categories: the semi-regenerative process for fixed bed reactors and the continuous regeneration process for moving bed reactors.