571498

research-article2015
MAC0010.1177/0020294015571498Advanced Process Control of an Ethylene Cracking FurnaceAdvanced Process Control of an Ethylene Cracking Furnace

Themed Paper

Advanced Process Control of

Measurement and Control
2015, Vol. 48(2) 50­–53
© The Institute of Measurement

an Ethylene Cracking Furnace

and Control 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0020294015571498
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Ping Li
School of Information and Control Engineering, Liaoning Shihua University, Fushun, China
liping@lnpu.edu.cn
Tian Li
School of Information and Control Engineering, Liaoning Shihua University, Fushun, China
Jiangtao Cao
School of Information and Control Engineering, Liaoning Shihua University, Fushun, China

The ethylene production plant is one of the most important units in petrochemical industry, and the ethylene cracking
furnace is the heart of the plant. The ethylene cracking furnace is a multivariable, strong coupling, and nonlinear pro-
cess, and therefore, it is difficult to be manipulated by traditional proportional–integral–derivative controls. This paper
reports a real application of advanced process control in five 470-kton/year SC-I tubular reactors. The advanced pro-
cess control deployed includes cracking outlet temperature control and feed volume control. This control system has
been operating since 2012. The variation of cracking outlet temperature has been reduced from ±5 to ±1 °C with a
setting time less than a few minutes even under a large-scale disturbance. The variation of feed volume has been
controlled within ±1%. As a result, the advanced process control system has achieved a total production increase by
0.3%.

I. Introduction multiple-input and multiple-output This paper reports a real application of

behaviors. Therefore, it is necessary to
Ethylene is one of the raw materials in introduce advanced process control
the chemical industry. The production of (APC) system to cope with these
ethylene is considered as a vital symbol problems, which is also the inevitable
of national comprehensive strength in the tendency of the current petrochemical
petrochemical industry. China has industry. Various APC technologies have
become the second largest ethylene been deployed in petrochemical plants
producer in 2006 as annual output is including the ethylene cracking furnace.
concerned, just next to the United APC technologies provide a wide range
States.1 It is estimated that the total of solutions to the problems mentioned
annual production of ethylene in 2015 will above, particularly addressing nonlinear,
increase to 21–23 million tons and will large lag, strong disturbance, time-
continue to expand in the future. varying parameters, variable coupling,
The heart of an ethylene plant is the and some unpredictable variables.2 Even
cracking furnace. The furnace process is though the APC technologies for
complex with some problems hard to be petrochemical processes are known
solved by traditional control systems, collectively as a control strategy showing
such as distributed reaction temperature superior control performance compared
profile along the reactor, nonlinear with traditional process control, they
performance with the deposition of have to be designed precisely according
coke on the inner tube surface, and to the features of the processes.
APC in five 470-kton/year SC-I tubular
reactors. The APC deployed includes
cracking outlet temperature (COT)
control and feed volume control. This
control system has been operating since
2012. As a result, the APC system has
achieved a total production increase by
0.3%. This paper is organized as
follows: section “Ethylene process and
the cracking furnace” describes the
features of SC-I-type cracking furnace
and its position in the ethylene plant. In
section “Control strategy,” the
development of the APC system for both
COT and feed volume control is
presented. The system implementation
is given in section “System
implementation.” In section “Application
results,” the performance of the
proposed APC scheme is illustrated by
the comparison of the usage of APC and

50  Measurement and Control  l  March 2015  Vol 48  No 2


previous proportional–integral–derivative
(PID) control. A brief conclusion is given
in section “Conclusion.”
II. Ethylene Process and the
Cracking Furnace
Production process of ethylene plant is
composed of fuel oil system, raw
material supplement and preheating
system, dilution steam system, cracking
furnace system, critical cold oil system,
high-pressure steam system, and cooling
and associated distillation towers. The
reactor feed contains at least two
streams: the hydrocarbon and the
dilution steam. Liquid hydrocarbons and
the dilution steam are fed into the tubular
reactors. The reaction section is divided
into eight zones, which can be heated
independently to achieve the desired
temperature profile. The higher the
cracking temperature, the higher the
ethylene yield and the lower the
propylene yield. The cracking is executed
at a decomposition tube outlet
temperature of approximately 800–
840 °C to control the ratio of ethylene to
propylene at a prescribed value. In the
distillation step, cracked heavy
components are separated from the
gases coming from the cracking furnace,
and further part of the cracked gasoline
is condensed to separate in the
downstream stage. However, the
cracking tubular reaction furnace is the
heart of the process. This session
accounts for 56% of the total production
cost, and the accuracy of the cracking
furnace control directly decides the
quality of the products.3 The schematic
diagram of the ethylene cracking furnace
is shown in Figure 1.
There are many types and kinds of
cracking furnaces, among which the
tubular is the top one. The SC-I-type
ethylene cracking furnace of 460 kton/
year is a typical one, which is made of
eight sets of tubular pipes. The main raw
material of ethylene is naphtha in this
application. The target products are
ethylene, propylene, and other
hydrocarbon products. Initial preheating
will be done in the preheating section of
the convection chamber where naphtha
Advanced Process Control of an Ethylene Cracking Furnace
Figure 1.  Schematic diagram of the ethylene
cracking furnace
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)XHOJDV
is fed into the cracking furnace mixed
with dilution steam. The mixture is then
preheated further into the state of
gasification with the temperature slightly
lower than that of the cracking reaction.
The mixture is then fed into the radiant
section of the furnace, where the
temperature of the gas mixture increases
rapidly to the desired cracking
temperature. In the radiant section, the
hydrocarbon is cracked to a combination
of target products and other heavier
hydrocarbons. Upon leaving the radiant
section of the furnace, the cracked gas is
cooled rapidly to stop the undesired
reaction.4
III. Control Strategy
According to the feature of the tubular
cracking reaction, the COT is an important
parameter affecting yields of ethylene
production, thus should be controlled.
Since the cracking furnaces are the first
step of the ethylene production process,
the entire process is affected by
disturbances that occur due to the furnace
operation.4 Therefore, the smoothing
operation of the furnace should be
guaranteed. This objective is achievable
through the temperature balance control
and the feed volume control.
A. COT control
The control objective is to regulate the
average COT by manipulating the fuel
March 2015  Vol 48 No 2  l  Measurement and Control  51
Themed Paper
gas flow. Therefore, furnace tube inner
temperature profile can be maintained at
a desired distribution along the tube
reactor. The APC system block diagram
is shown in Figure 2, where feed-forward
cascade control is adopted. Average
COT relies on feed-forward channel to
eliminate measurable disturbances such
as total feed volume and furnace
temperature. The controlled variable of
the inner loop is the pressure of the fuel
gas flow. The controlled variable of the
outer loop is still the average COT. A
temperature-advanced controller is used
for the outer loop, and the inner loop is
regulated by a traditional proportional–
integral (PI) controller.
B. Total feed volume control
As described in section “Ethylene process
and the cracking furnace,” the total feed
volume should be kept constant in order
to minimize the effect of the cracking
furnace to the rest of the ethylene
production process, that is, the
downstream units. Also, the tube reactor
is composed of eight sets of tubular pipes,
and the temperature in each branch
should be balanced while the total feed
volume is adjusted. The temperature
balance control among the eight pipes
becomes a multiple-input and multiple-
output (MIMO) control problem. Figure 3
provides a solution in which the set-points
of eight inlet pipe flows serve as the
manipulate variables, and eight outlet pipe
temperatures are considered as the
controlled variables, where TIi (i = 1, 2, …,
8) are eight thermocouples, and FCi (i = 1,
2, …, 8) are eight inlet flow PI controllers.
The constraints of the eight inlet pipe flows
such as the upper limits and lower limits of
the adjustments (ΔFimin, ΔFimax, i = 1, 2, …,
8) are set in the temperature balance
control. Also, the fluctuation of the total
feed volume should be minimized. The
outputs of the temperature balance control
are the adjustments of eight inlet pipe
flows (ΔFi, i = 1, 2, …, 8).
An increase or drop volume control is
placed in combination with the above
temperature balance control as shown in
Figure 3. When the set-point of the
desired total feed volume is required, the
 Themed Paper

Advanced Process Control of an Ethylene Cracking Furnace

Figure 2.  Average COT control block diagram

Total feed volume

feed forward of naphtha
control Furnace
temperature
Set point Average
of COT COT
temperature COT + temperature
+ + pressure cracking
advanced + PIC valve
controller - object furnace
-

transmitter

Figure 3.  Total feed volume control and temperature balance control

ƸF1
Set point
ƸF2 Temperature
Increase/ ƸF3 balance
ƸF4
drop control
Total feed volume ƸF5 (Constrain condition:
flow control ƸF6 ěƸFi=0, Fimin≤Fi≤Fimaxˈ
ƸF7 ƸFimin≤ƸFi≤ƸFimax )
ƸF8

FC8 TI8

FC7 TI7

FC6 TI6

FC5 TI5

Naphtha Pyrolysis gas

FC4 TI4

FC3 TI3

FC2 TI2

FC1 TI1

increase or drop volume control will
re-distribute the volume among the eight
inlet pipes by re-setting their set-points.
IV. System Implementation
The APC system is developed at the
platform of ESP-/SYS-A software
designed by Zhejiang Supcon and
implemented in an industrial upper
computer which sits over and is
connected with a DeltaV Distributed
Control System (DCS) in the form of
OPC standard. All the conventional
controllers such as the fuel gas pressure
PI controller shown in Figure 2 and the
eight inlet flow PI controllers FCi (i = 1, 2,
…, 8) shown in Figure 3 are
implemented in the DeltaV DCS.
Ethylene cracking furnace’s actuators
and different measurement instruments
are connected through the cable to
the DeltaV DCS with an OPC server,
designed by Emerson. Figure 4

52  Measurement and Control  l  March 2015  Vol 48  No 2


Figure 4.  APC implementation
Upper Computer (ESP-/SYS-A)
Control Network
DeltaV DCS (OPC Server)
Instrument Cable
Ethylene Cracking Furnace
illustrates the system implementation
structure in terms of hardware and
software environments.
V. Application Results
The designed APC system has been
operating since 2012 in five 470-kton/year
SC-I ethylene cracking tubular furnaces in
a Chinese petrochemical company in the
northwest region. Before the APC system
was in operation, every conventional
controller for the ethylene cracking
furnace had to be judged individually from
experience of the operation. The following
of the change in the operation was very
slow, and the fluctuation of the COT and
the total feed volume was large. After the
APC is in operation, the operation of the
system becomes easier and less
intensive. The change of COT before and
after the introduction of the COT control is
shown in Figure 5. It is evident that the
disparity of the average COT is reduced.
The fluctuation of the average COT has
been decreased from ±5 to ±1 °C. When
a large disturbance occurs, temperature’s
fluctuation declines from ±10 to ±1 °C.
So, it turns out to be the characteristics of
strong antidisturbance capability. The
fluctuation range of the total feed volume,
caused by the branch pipe flow’s change,
is controlled within 1%. The ethylene
production rate is increased by 0.3%.
Furthermore, due to the reduction of the
fluctuation of COT, the coke deposition in
the inner wall of the tubular reactors will
be reduced and therefore reaching the
Advanced Process Control of an Ethylene Cracking Furnace
Figure 5.  Comparison results before and after APC system commissioning: (a) APC off and (b) APC
on
Actuator
aims of prolonging life of the cracking
furnace and extending interval cycle of
decoking.
VI. Conclusion
This paper reports the design and
application results of an APC system for
ethylene cracking furnace. The APC
consists of the COT control and the
temperature balance control and total
feed volume control. The APC system is
implemented in an industrial upper
computer sitting over the ordinary DCS.
This type of the implementation has less
distraction to the DCS. The connection of
DCS and the upper computer is realized
based on the OPC standard. The
application results show that the
designed APC system meets the
requirement of the operation of the
cracking furnaces, enhances the
antidisturbance ability of the plant,
shortens the dynamic response time, and
March 2015  Vol 48 No 2  l  Measurement and Control  53
Themed Paper
improves the stability of the production
process by reducing the fluctuation of the
COT. We have to consider the optimal
temperature profile along the tubular
reactor in the near future to further
improve the production efficiency.
Funding
This research was supported by the project
of National Natural Science Foundation of
China (61203021) and National Natural
Science Foundation of Liaoning Province
(2013020024).
References
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2. Wang SQ. Application and technology of advanced
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3. Li P, Li QA. Development and application of
advanced process control system for ethylene
cracking heaters. CIESC Journal 2011; 62(8):
2216–20.
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Simulation, optimization and control of a thermal
cracking furnace. Energy 2006; 31: 516–27.