Continuous catalytic regeneration (CCR) is a key process in petroleum refineries to produce high octane gasoline. In this article, a
commercial scale CCR plant with the nominal capacity of 22000 bbl day-1 was simulated using Ref-sim module and Petro-sim simulator.
The validity of this plant wide simulator was evaluated by actual test runs obtained during 6 months of operation. Simulation results
showed that the AAD % of momentous output variables i.e. outlet temperature of reactors, product volume yield, product RON, H2 purity
of recycle gas and coke deposition on the catalyst against actual data were 0.5 %, 0.94 %, 1.098 %, 0.57 % and 0.347 %, respectively.
Then, the optimal values for reactor temperatures, feed flow rate and recycle flow rate were determined using sensitivity analysis approach.
After setting these decision variables on the proposed optimal values, the actual RON and volume yield of the CCR plant enhanced from
99.55 and 82.04 % to 99.67 and 82.4 %, respectively.
Key words: Catalytic Reformer, Simulation, Petro-Sim, Sensitivity Analysis, Optimization
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