Maximize the Gas Oil Yield from Delayed Coker Unit by Optimization Between Process Variables

Today the oil market demands are calling for more gasoline and diesel products while having a problem of heavier crude oils with high density that becomes available over the lighter crudes in the last decades. The needs to heavy oil processing become the priority in all refineries. More sophisticated distillation, physical separation units and conversion units are required for heavy oil processing. One of the most important conversion units is the delayed coker unit which converts the heaviest and least desirable elements of crude bottoms, such as heavy sour vacuum residue into marketable products that is further processed to higher economic value products like jet fuel, gasoline and diesel fuel that highly demanded in the world markets. The products of the delayed coker process are sour fuel gas, Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), naphtha (gasoline), light gas oil (LGO), heavy gas oil (HGO) and coke. Now it’s the time to think on how to increase the liquid yields of gasoline and gas oil from delayed coker unit at the expense of coke formation. A simulation model has been built by using Aspen HYSYS to obtain results and to make an optimization for the process variables for the delayed coker unit while comparing them to the old design case to achieve the maximum gas oil yield while keeping process safety factors in our concerns.