A new generic reaction for modeling fluid catalytic cracking risers

A new generic reaction in the form of PC_i→PC_m+[i,m]→PC_m+λi,m coke+surplusage has been proposed for describing the catalytic cracking behavior of petroleum narrow cuts or pseudo-components(PCs),where the rate constant formula is derived from the transition state theory and the coking amount is correlated to the properties of the intermediate substance [i,m].In composing the cracking reaction network for feedstock and product oils,only the product PC m of the proposed generic reaction is used,which together with a criterion for excluding exothermic reactions,distinctly reduces the number of reactions in the network.With the proposed cracking reaction scheme coupled with special pseudo-components,a predictive one-dimensional steady state model for fluid catalytic cracking risers is formulated in the sense that for a given riser and given catalyst,the model parameters are independent of stock oils,product schemes and other operational conditions.The great correlating and predicting capability of the resulted model is tested with production data in different scenarios of four commercial risers.

A new approach to quantifying vehicle induced turbulence for complex traffic scenarios

Traffic-related pollutants adversely affect air quality, especially in regions near major roadways. The vehicleinduced turbulence(VIT) is a significant factor that controls the initial dilution, dispersion, and ultimately the chemical and physical fate of pollutants by altering the conditions in the microenvironment. This study used a computational fluid dynamics(CFD) software FLUENT to model the vehicle-induced turbulence(VIT) generated on roadways, with a focus on impact of vehicle-vehicle interactions, traffic density and vehicle composition on turbulent kinetic energy(TKE). We show, for the first time, that the overall TKE from multiple vehicles traveling in series can be estimated by superimposing the TKE of each vehicle, without considering the distance between them while the distance is greater than one vehicle length. This finding is particularly significant since it enables a new approach to VIT simulations where the overall TKE is calculated as a function of number of vehicles. We found that the interactions between vehicles traveling next to each other in adjacent lanes are insignificant,regardless the directions of the traffic flow. Consequently, simulations of different traffic scenarios can be substantially simplified by treating two-way traffic as one-way traffic, with less than 5% difference in the overall volume-averaged TKE. We also developed equations that allow the estimation of the overall volume-averaged TKE as a function of the number and the type of vehicles.