Experimental Evaluation and Scale Up of the Electric Steam Cracking Furnace

Steam cracking is an important process in the petrochemical value chain. In a steam cracker, petroleum-based feedstock (like ethane or naphtha) is broken down into base chemicals, such as ethylene and propylene. These base chemicals provide for versatile chemical building blocks with which many materials including resins, plastics and fibers can be produced. However, the process of steam cracking is energy intensive due to the endothermic pyrolysis reactions and need for very high temperatures. Today’s cracker furnaces use fossil fuels to provide this required heat and are consequently a major source of CO2 emissions. Process electrification has been identified as one of the decarbonization routes for Shell. Therefore, Shell is working on the development of electrification of cracker furnaces. An experimental unit has been designed and started up at the Energy Transition Campus Amsterdam, The Netherlands. This experimental unit aims to provide the first proof points that the required heat and performance can be achieved through electric heating. This project focusses on the evaluation of results from experimental electric furnace unit. The evaluation focusses on three main topics:
 To prove that an e-furnace is able to provide the required heat demand
 To assess the heating uniformity expressed by the spread in tube metal temperatures
 To validate CFD modelling to allow for design of a scaled-up e-furnace to MW scale
Another aspect of this project is to look for possible heat integration configurations for a commercial e-Furnaces. A number of heat integration configurations were evaluated aimed at minimizing energy requirements. A heat-integrated ASPEN Plus models was also built for the design evaluations.