EFFECTIVE METHOD FOR EVALUATING COMMERCIAL CATALYTIC CRACKING CATALYSTS IN THE LABORATORY
The article describes the methodology applied to studies evaluating cracking catalysts based on the use of a fixed layer reactor for the Microactivity Testing Method (MAТ). The authors reveal the five main stages of the method for evaluating catalysts: conducting steam stabilization of catalysts; determining the activity of microspheric catalysts; determining the fractional composition of the obtained products; determining the quality of the target products; processing and analyzing the results to obtain a material balance. Since the fresh catalyst is very active, artificial deactivation is necessary. In order to simulate the behavior of a catalyst running on a real world plant, special attention is paid to the steam stabilization of the catalyst. In addition, the article describes a series of microactivity tests to quantify the impact on conversion. Based on the experiments conducted, the authors propose a method for determining the fractional composition of reaction products using gas chromatographic analysis, which allows to separate gasoline from a mixture of products with simultaneous determination of its octane number.