Visbreaking and Thermal Cracking
Visbreaking and thermal cracking pilot plants.
Intertek has two visbreaking pilot plants, located at Intertek PARC in the USA, and at PolyChemLab in the Netherlands.
Visbreaking or thermal cracking reduces the viscosity of the vacuum residue and converts the residue to valuable products that otherwise can not be recovered from the residue by conventional distillation. Visbreaking lowers pour points of waxy residues and enables the refiner to blend heavier materials with lighter fuel oils. Coil temperatures can be raised to increase the yields of lighter products just until coke formation starts to lead to a pressure increase across the visbreaker coil. Visbreaking does some desulfurization, but actually increases the sulfur content of the HFO fraction.
The USA visbreaking and thermal cracking pilot plant contains a 130ft, 3000cc coil with eight zones each with independent temperature control. The feed rate can be adjusted from 1 to 3 gallons/hour. "P-2" is also equiped with an integrated multi-product distillation system.
The Netherland visbreaking and thermal cracking pilot plant contains a 6 meter, 420cc coil with one temperature-controlled zone. The feed rate is set at 2000cc/hr and the pilot plant is equipped with a multi-product short-path distillation system.
Pilot plant Services:
Contact us to see how Intertek can help your organization with Visbreaking and Thermal Cracking.