CRACKING HEAVY HYDROCARBONS USING LIGHT ALKANE FREE RADICALS PRODUCED IN A PLASMA AND A FLUIDISED CATALYTIC BED

摘要

The present invention relates to a process for cracking heavy hydrocarbons into lighter hydrocarbons, and to a device for carrying out this process. …??This process consists in using a bed of particles, advantageously catalytic particles, in a reaction chamber, introducing a gas for the fluidisation of the bed in accordance with a predetermined flow rate so as to create a spurting fluidised bed and introducing a plasma jet, preferably containing argon, into the chamber, the jet being directed towards a defined zone of the bed so as to create a reaction space having at least two reaction zones at different temperatures, the zone at the higher temperature being that into which the plasma jet is directed, introducing the heavy hydrocarbons into the reaction zone at lower temperature and preferably introducing into the zone at higher temperature one or more light alkanes so as to bring about the cracking of the heavy hydrocarbons in the fluidised bed, the latter effecting a quenching of the reaction mixture and catalysing the cracking. The process furthermore consists in discharging the products obtained downstream from the zone at lower temperature. …??The invention is particularly applicable in the chemical and energy-generating industries.