re: Explosion at PBF in Chalmette

PBF “ Smitty’s, hold my beer “

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someone’s upset because Rocky & Carlo’s is out of baked macaroni

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Never happens

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Cat cracker blew. Everyone's accounted for from what we were told

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If a cat cracker blew and everyone is ok, that’s truly amazing

Wonder if they had advance warning and were able to clear the area.

A cat cracker typically processes heavy oil fractions that have already been separated from the crude oil during the first stage of refining.Refining works in a specific order:Distillation (The "Separator"): Raw crude oil is heated in a distillation tower, which physically separates it into different "fractions" based on their boiling points.Lighter parts (like butane and straight-run gasoline) float to the top.Heavy gas oils and residues sink to the bottom.Cat Cracking (The "Converter"): The cat cracker takes those heavy gas oils—which are too thick and heavy to be used as gasoline—and chemically breaks them down into lighter, high-value fuels like gasoline

AI generated

[quote]What is a cat cracker?[/quote

I remember the Tenneco refinery explosion around 1976. My grandparents lived down in Chalmette near Saint Mark's. They said they heard the explosion and went outside. They said pretty much everyone on the block had come out and was looking towards the refinery.

yea ….cat units are typically tallest units in refinery (due to regen staked on top
of reactor)…that doesn’t look like at cat unit….maybe a light ends unit

lol all FCCs are the same in principal…. Regen maintains a lower psi than the RX to prevent O2 from entering the RX (Boom). The off gasses from the regen (Co/O2/spent catalyst) travel to an electrically charged precipitator that catches the spent cat and rappers drop it to roll offs and the remaining gases flow out the top to atmosphere. Most of the time the explosions come from cat circulation reversal or feed issues causing the regen CO to spike, sending it to an electrically charged precipitator and BOOM. Ours has triconex that kills the precip power on hi CO BUT most companies don’t due to fear of environmental fines. That’s an extremely watered down version but you get the point.

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If that’s an FCC….. it’s an itty bitty baby one. The reactor/regins don’t usually blow. The precips at the tail end of the regen flue gas on the other hand…. They go pretty regular. If that’s what it was, they should have plenty of heads up via CO analyzers and PDIs between the RX and Regen.

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He's talking about on a "Cat Cracker" (Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit) there is a reactor and a Regenerator. The heavy liquids to be cracked are pumped into the reactor and just before they enter the vessel, fresh catalyst is mixed in and runs at about 900 deg F (IIRC, I don't remember the pressure ~18 PSI maybe)

The reaction between the hydrocarbons and the catalyst "cracks" the carbon-carbon bonds in the molecules. A C28 may become a C17, C9, C3 molecules.

The lighter cracked gas goes out the top of the Reactor, the catalyst and heavy carbon attached to the catalyst goes to the bottom. The coked catalyst settles at the bottom of the reactor and eventually goes into the Regenerator. This is accomplished by manipulating a very large sliding valve so that there is always a pressure differential across the level of catalyst and the Regenerator. The Regenerator burns the coke (carbon) off the catalyst at around 30 PSI and 1300 deg F.

If the catalyst level drains into the Regen, it is possible to get the 1300 deg combustion into the Reactor and BOOM