Processes and systems for making recycle content hydrocarbons
Processes and systems for making recycle content hydrocarbons, including olefins, are provided that integrate a cracker unit with one or more other processing units. For example, in some cases, a fluidized catalytic cracking unit may be used to crack recycle content pyrolysis oil and the effluent from the FCC may be further processed in a conventional cracker unit, including its downstream separation zone, to provide recycle content hydrocarbon product stream. In other cases, a pyrolysis unit and cracking unit may be co-located and may share at least one utility, service group, boundary, conduit, energy exchange zone, and/or geographical area.
1. A process for making olefins, said process comprising:
(a) cracking a stream comprising a recycle content pyrolysis oil composition (r-pyoil) in a fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) unit to form an FCC effluent; wherein said FCC effluent comprises a recycle content C5 to C22 hydrocarbon composition (r-C5 to C22);
(b) separating the FCC effluent to form an FCC product stream comprising predominantly C4 and lighter components; and
(c) further separating at least a portion of said FCC product stream in a fractionation zone of a thermal cracking unit to form an olefin product comprising predominantly propylene; wherein the process further comprising combining at least a portion of said FCC product stream with at least a portion of the olefin product from the fractionation zone of said thermal cracking furnace unit.
2. The process of claim 1 , wherein said FCC product stream is selected from the group consisting of a recycle content naphtha (r-naphtha), a recycle content gasoline (r-gasoline), and a recycle content diesel (r-diesel).
3. The process of claim 2 , wherein said FCC product stream comprises a recycle content C2 to C4 hydrocarbon (r-C2 to C4).
4. The process of claim 1 , further comprising combining at least a portion of the FCC product stream with a feed to the thermal cracking unit thereby producing a combined stream and cracking the combined stream.
5. The process of claim 4 , wherein said separating in step (b) is carried out in a main fractionator of the FCC unit.
6. The process of claim 4 , wherein said separating is carried out in at least one fractionator of an FCC gas plant.
7. The process of claim 6 , wherein said FCC unit is newly constructed for cracking a feed comprising r-pyoil.
8. The process of claim 6 , wherein said FCC product stream comprises at least 5 and/or not more than 99 weight percent of the recycle content C5 to C22 hydrocarbon composition (r-C5 to C22).
9. The process of claim 8 , wherein a feed stream to said FCC unit comprises at least 5 and/or not more than 99 weight percent of the r-pyoil, based on a total weight of the feed stream.
10. The process of claim 4 , wherein said cracking is carried out in the presence of a catalyst selected from the group consisting of Y zeolite, ZSM-5, and combinations thereof.
11. The process of claim 10 , wherein said thermal cracking unit is a gas cracker.