FCCU Best Practices from the Global Customer Technology Team

Advice on partial combustion transition and regenerator combustion mode transition upsets

Today many FCC units still operate under partial combustion conditions —a more complex operation relative to full combustion due to additional independent operating variables such as regenerator flue gas CO content, regenerator temperature, carbon on regenerated catalyst and the necessity of a CO boiler or incinerator to combust CO to CO2 prior to release to the atmosphere.

In this article in the Summer 2021 issue of Catalagram, Grace’s Sr. Principal Technologist, FCC, David Hunt looks at the additional complexity of partial combustion operations and offers best practices to ensure a safe transition to partial combustion with an example of a successful transition compared with a failed attempt and an example of a full combustion unit which mistakenly transitioned to partial combustion.