Processes herein may be used to thermally crack various hydrocarbon feeds, and may eliminate the refinery altogether while making the crude to chemicals process very flexible in terms of crude. In embodiments herein, crude is progressively separated into at least light and heavy fractions. Depending on the quality of the light and heavy fractions, these are routed to one of three upgrading operations, including a fixed bed hydroconversion unit, a fluidized catalytic conversion unit, or a residue hydrocracking unit that may utilize an ebullated bed reactor. Products from the upgrading operations may be used as feed to a steam cracker.

Processes herein may be used to thermally crack various hydrocarbon feeds, and may eliminate the refinery altogether while making the crude to chemicals process very flexible in terms of crude. In embodiments herein, crude is progressively separated into at least light and heavy fractions. Depending on the quality of the light and heavy fractions, these are routed to one of three upgrading operations, including a fixed bed hydroconversion unit, a fluidized catalytic conversion unit, or a residue hydrocracking unit that may utilize an ebullated bed reactor. Products from the upgrading operations may be used as feed to a steam cracker.

A method of producing a fuel additive includes passing a feed stream comprising C4 hydrocarbons through a methyl tertiary butyl ether unit producing a first process stream; passing the first process stream through a selective butadiene hydrogenation unit transforming greater than or equal to 90% by weight of the butadiene to 1-butene and 2-butene, preferably greater than or equal to 93%, preferably, greater than or equal to 94%, more preferably, greater than or equal to 95% producing a second process stream; passing the second process stream through a hydration unit producing a third process stream and the fuel additive; passing the third process stream through a total hydrogenation unit producing a hydrogenated stream; and passing the hydrogenated stream to a cracker unit.

The present invention relates to an NCC process and an apparatus for producing light olefins and aromatics, wherein the C5+ fraction (16) of the cracking effluent is separated into a C5 fraction (25) recycled into the NCC reactor (4) and a C6+ fraction (26), and wherein the C6+ fraction (26) is sent into an aromatics extraction unit (30) to produce an aromatics-enriched fraction (31) and a low-aromatics fraction (32).

The present invention relates to an NCC process and an apparatus for producing light olefins and aromatics, wherein the fraction comprising ethane and/or propane (12) from the cracking effluent is sent at least partly into a steam cracking furnace (19), fed with steam (20), to produce a steam cracking effluent (21) comprising ethylene and/or propylene.

The present invention relates to a method for producing a liquid hydrocarbon fuel comprising a first reaction step and a second reaction step given below: (1) a first reaction step: hydrocracking a raw material oil in the presence of a hydrocracking reaction catalyst at a feeding pressure of hydrogen of from 0.2 to 0.95 MPa, a liquid hourly space velocity of a liquid volume of the raw material oil of from 0.05 to 0.5 hr.sup.−1, and a ratio of a flow rate of the hydrogen to a flow rate of the raw material oil of from 100 to 1,000 NL of the hydrogen per 1 L of the raw material oil; and (2) a second reaction step: hydrogenating the cracked solution in the presence of a hydrogenation reaction catalyst at a feeding pressure of hydrogen of from 0.2 to 0.95 MPa, a liquid hourly space velocity of a liquid volume of the raw material oil of from 0.2 to 5 hr.sup.−1, and a ratio of a flow rate of the hydrogen to a flow rate of the raw material oil of from 100 to 1,000 NL of the hydrogen per 1 L of the raw material oil. According to the present invention, a desired liquid hydrocarbon fuel can be produced by carrying out a combination of the hydrocracking reaction and the hydrogenation reaction of a raw material oil such as fats and oils in a given composition by feeding a low-pressure hydrogen of nearly a normal pressure.

A method of producing a fuel additive includes: passing a first process stream comprising C4 hydrocarbons through a methyl tertiary butyl ether synthesis unit producing a first recycle stream; passing the first recycle stream through a hydration unit producing the fuel additive and a second recycle stream; passing the second recycle stream through a recycle hydrogenation unit and a deisobutanizer unit; and recycling the second recycle stream to the methyl tertiary butyl ether synthesis unit.

The present invention relates to multi-bed catalytic reactor with a cylindrical shape comprising a mixing device mounted between two catalyst beds in the reactor, said mixing device has a circular outer rim which corresponds to the inner wall of the reactor, the mixing device comprises; collecting means disposed in a collecting section for collecting fluid from an upstream catalytic bed, mixing means disposed in a mixing section for mixing the collected fluid comprising guide vanes and guide ramps, and discharging means disposed in a discharging section for discharging the mixed fluid to a down-stream catalytic bed; wherein the collecting section, the mixing section and the discharging section are disposed outside the center of the circular cross-section of the reactor, as well as associated methods for mixing and the use of such a mixing device in catalytic reactors.

The present invention relates to multi-bed catalytic reactor with a cylindrical shape comprising a mixing device mounted between two catalyst beds in the reactor, said mixing device has a circular outer rim which corresponds to the inner wall of the reactor, the mixing device comprises; collecting means disposed in a collecting section for collecting fluid from an upstream catalytic bed, mixing means disposed in a mixing section for mixing the collected fluid comprising guide vanes and guide ramps, and discharging means disposed in a discharging section for discharging the mixed fluid to a down-stream catalytic bed; wherein the collecting section, the mixing section and the discharging section are disposed outside the center of the circular cross-section of the reactor, as well as associated methods for mixing and the use of such a mixing device in catalytic reactors.

Producing C5 olefins from steam cracker C5 feeds may include reacting a mixed hydrocarbon stream comprising cyclopentadiene, C5 olefins, and C6+ hydrocarbons in a dimerization reactor where cyclopentadiene is dimerized to dicyclopentadiene. The dimerization reactor effluent may be separated into a fraction comprising the C6+ hydrocarbons and dicyclopentadiene and a second fraction comprising C5 olefins and C5 dienes. The second fraction, a saturated hydrocarbon diluent stream, and hydrogen may be fed to a catalytic distillation reactor system for concurrently separating linear C5 olefins from saturated hydrocarbon diluent, cyclic C5 olefins, and C5 dienes contained in the second fraction and selectively hydrogenating C5 dienes. An overhead distillate including the linear C5 olefins and a bottoms product including cyclic C5 olefins are recovered from the catalytic distillation reactor system. Other aspects of the C5 olefin systems and processes, including catalyst configurations and control schemes, are also described.