Development of a CFD model for steam cracker radiant coil using molecular kinetics

ABSTRACT

There are several commercially available radiant coil designs for steam hydrocarbon crackers with various features which include, reduced coking, increased selectivity and higher heat transfer coefficient. A structured approach is required to qualify these radiant coil designs for commercial steam crackers. This work describes the development of a single radiant coil model using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and focuses on investigating the impact of various turbulence model and wall functions. The model validation is carried out using experimental results reported in literature. The validated model was then used to simulate propane cracking by using a reduced molecular kinetic mechanism. Good agreement was found between the CFD results using reduced kinetic mechanism with those reported in literature using two-dimensional model with radical reaction mechanism.

KEYWORDS:

• Computational fluid dynamics
• cracking tube
• turbulence models
• wall functions
• steam cracking

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Deepak Pal http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0204-5846

Ananth Sharma http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3017-2327

Abduljelil Iliyas http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6990-8103