Abstract

Energy is required in order to expand a countries economic growth and the petroleum
products made from crude oil and other hydrocarbon liquids account for about 34% of the
energy consumed worldwide (EIA, 2017). The petroleum refining industry provides gasoline
and petrol by using several separation processes such as fractional distillation and a few
others. Fractional distillation is the process of heating or boiling the crude oil until vapor state
in which will be separated into different components according to the boiling point of the
substances by condensing inside the fractionating column thus producing a multitude of
products. However, this distillation shows a little problems on the efficiency of fractional
column and the large number of residue according to crude oil compositions in which the
ways to overcome the problem was also determined. There are two solution identified, which
are, by using the fluid catalytic cracking process from the residue input and introducing valve
tray on the bottom of the fractional column and bubble cap on the top of the column. First,
the fluid catalytic cracking use catalyst which converts the large molecules to the desired
gasoline range molecules (U.S. Energy Information Administration, n.d.). Next, the
efficiency of fractional column can be increased by placing valve tray at the bottom of the
tower because of its ability to weep at low vapour rates hence, decreasing the amount of
lighter fractions in the bottoms product. Then, the bubble caps tray is installed at the top of
the tower for liquid reflux to fill the tray thus avoiding overload flow of liquid on the tray.
Lastly, to increase time of contact of vapour and liquid, a damp is created to hold the liquid
with the height of weir was improvised to produce a continuous and steady process flow.