MaximaLabs
All guides
Reference model (screening correlation)

How to simulate delayed coker on a maya vacuum residue (screening)

A delayed coker — the bottom-of-the-barrel unit that turns vacuum residue into gas, naphtha, light and heavy coker gas oil and petroleum coke — run on the heaviest two cuts of a real NOAA ADIOS assay (Maya, EXXON, AD00734: API 21.9, characterized at constant Watson K 11.5, so the residue cuts carry SG 1.03 and 1.06). This is a screening model (public correlation, not a licensor model). Yields come from the Gary & Handwerk Conradson-carbon correlation (coke = 1.6·CCR; gas = 7.8 + 0.144·CCR; naphtha = 11.29 + 0.343·CCR; gas oil the rest), split into LCGO/HCGO and fuel gas/LPG on a published commercial yield pattern. Coker yields are set by licensor correlations regressed on vendor data, and none of that is used here. The CCR of 27.8 wt% is the published value for an Isthmus/Maya vacuum residue (OGJ case study), stated as such. That blend is not this assay, so the feed is an approximation, and it sits near the top of the correlation's 10-29 wt% CCR range. Measured against published yields, the correlation's coke is biased high (mean absolute error ~4.4 wt% over three published points). A bench study of a Maya residue reports ~38 wt% coke where this predicts ~44. Read the slate as an order-of-magnitude estimate. The furnace duty is the enthalpy balance between residue at its feed state and products at the drum temperature (coke priced as graphite), with no heat of cracking unless you give one. Sulfur is distributed 30% to coke, 30% to gas as H₂S and 20% to HCGO, which puts coke sulfur below the 1.3-1.6x feed enrichment usually reported. Bounded: no drum cycle, no recycle-ratio or pressure effect unless you state an operating basis, no coke quality (needle vs sponge).

VR
VR
gas
nap
LCGO
HCGO
coke
DCU
GAS
Naphtha
LCGO
HCGO
COKE
  1. 1
    Open the ready-made model

    Open the "Delayed coker on a Maya vacuum residue (screening)" model in the MaximaLabs workspace — no install, no license. It loads live on the canvas, ready to edit and run.

  2. 2
    Confirm the thermodynamics

    This process is modeled with the PENG-ROBINSON property package over methane, propane, h2s — already selected, so the phase equilibrium and enthalpy are physically consistent from the first run.

  3. 3
    Review the flowsheet

    The flowsheet chains DCU. Every block is a real, solvable unit op you can reconfigure on the canvas.

  4. 4
    Run the simulation

    Click Run. The deterministic solver converges the material and energy balances (recycles included) and fills the live stream table — the AI never invents a number.

  5. 5
    Read the results and iterate

    Inspect the converged streams, tweak a spec, and re-run — or ask the AI copilot to explain a result or diagnose a failed solve in plain English.

What you'll build
Thermodynamics
PENG-ROBINSON
Components
methane, propane, h2s
Unit operations
DCU
Open this model in the workspace

Opens live on the canvas — free, no install.

Explore the model & flowsheet

Frequently asked questions

What does the Delayed coker on a Maya vacuum residue (screening) model simulate?
A delayed coker — the bottom-of-the-barrel unit that turns vacuum residue into gas, naphtha, light and heavy coker gas oil and petroleum coke — run on the heaviest two cuts of a real NOAA ADIOS assay (Maya, EXXON, AD00734: API 21.9, characterized at constant Watson K 11.5, so the residue cuts carry SG 1.03 and 1.06). This is a screening model (public correlation, not a licensor model). Yields come from the Gary & Handwerk Conradson-carbon correlation (coke = 1.6·CCR; gas = 7.8 + 0.144·CCR; naphtha = 11.29 + 0.343·CCR; gas oil the rest), split into LCGO/HCGO and fuel gas/LPG on a published commercial yield pattern. Coker yields are set by licensor correlations regressed on vendor data, and none of that is used here. The CCR of 27.8 wt% is the published value for an Isthmus/Maya vacuum residue (OGJ case study), stated as such. That blend is not this assay, so the feed is an approximation, and it sits near the top of the correlation's 10-29 wt% CCR range. Measured against published yields, the correlation's coke is biased high (mean absolute error ~4.4 wt% over three published points). A bench study of a Maya residue reports ~38 wt% coke where this predicts ~44. Read the slate as an order-of-magnitude estimate. The furnace duty is the enthalpy balance between residue at its feed state and products at the drum temperature (coke priced as graphite), with no heat of cracking unless you give one. Sulfur is distributed 30% to coke, 30% to gas as H₂S and 20% to HCGO, which puts coke sulfur below the 1.3-1.6x feed enrichment usually reported. Bounded: no drum cycle, no recycle-ratio or pressure effect unless you state an operating basis, no coke quality (needle vs sponge).
Which thermodynamic method does it use?
The PENG-ROBINSON property package, over methane, propane, h2s — already selected. You can switch the method on the canvas before running.
Which unit operations are in the flowsheet?
It chains DCU. Every block is a real, solvable unit operation you can reconfigure, add to, or remove.
Do I need to install software or buy a license?
No. Delayed coker on a Maya vacuum residue (screening) runs entirely in your browser on MaximaLabs — free, no install, no license. Open the model to load it live and run the deterministic solver.

More guides like this

Hydrocracker complex, Jamnagar, India

Hydrocracking reaction section

A refinery hydrocracker: heavy VGO (modeled as n-dodecane) plus excess H₂ is cracked over catalyst into lighter products via a discrete lumped first-order kinetic network, then flashed to knock out recycle H₂/light gas from the liquid product (Peng-Robinson). Conversion is set by reactor temperature and LHSV.

Hydrocracker complex, Jamnagar, India

Hydrocracking fractionation train

The standard downstream train a hydrocracker reaction section feeds into: a high-pressure separator knocks the H₂-rich recycle gas off the reactor effluent, a letdown valve drops the liquid to low pressure for a second flash (LPG-range off-gas), then a fractionator (crude_distillation, one side draw solved as a real MESH withdrawal so every component closes) splits what remains into light naphtha, a kerosene/diesel cut, and unconverted oil bottoms. A textbook train topology (Gary & Handwerk-style HP-sep → letdown → LP-sep → fractionator), not a replication of any specific published paper's numbers — the reaction lumps/kinetics are the same illustrative n-paraffin network as the 'hydrocracker-unit' example, not a real assay.

Light naphtha isomerization unit, Corpus Christi, Texas, USA

C5/C6 isomerization: why the colder catalyst wins

The light end of a gasoline pool. Straight-chain C₅/C₆ paraffins have poor octane, their branched isomers have good octane, and the reaction between them is a simple reversible exothermic rearrangement. Which means the equilibrium gets worse as the reactor gets hotter — and that single fact, not activity, is the technology choice in this unit. Run the built-in temperature sweep: this light straight-run naphtha reaches 74.9% iso-C₅ and 67.2% iso-C₆ at 400 K (the chlorided-alumina window) and only 65.3% and 57.6% at 530 K (the zeolitic window). A chlorided-alumina catalyst does not beat a zeolite by being more active; it beats it by approaching a better equilibrium. That is also why the two are not interchangeable in a revamp — a zeolitic unit cannot be pushed to alumina octane by running harder, only by running colder than its catalyst allows. Two things the flowsheet shows directly: moles are conserved exactly (one molecule in, one molecule out — 100.00000 mol/s out for 100 in, the module's own gate), and the benzene and cyclohexane in the feed pass through untouched at 4.00% and 6.00%, because a component named in no pair is not something this block pretends to convert. Only two pairs are written (n-pentane/isopentane and n-hexane/2-methylpentane) and that is deliberate: pairs are applied in sequence over a shared mole pool, so two pairs sharing one normal would let the second redistribute what the first already converted. A real C₆ network (n-hexane / 2-MP / 3-MP / 2,2-DMB / 2,3-DMB, each with its own equilibrium) is a coupled problem this block does not solve — see the.

Sulfur recovery unit, Rotterdam, Netherlands

Claus sulfur recovery unit (SRU): the 2:1 ratio that sets the ceiling

The back end of the amine train, and the unit that keeps a refinery's sulfur out of the atmosphere. Acid gas off an amine regenerator (60% H₂S, 36% CO₂) is part-burned in a reaction furnace, then reacted over two catalyst beds with sulfur condensed between them. The whole design follows from one number. The furnace burns a fraction phi of the H₂S to SO₂ (H₂S + 3/2 O₂ → SO₂ + H₂O); the Claus reaction then consumes them at 2:1 (2 H₂S + SO₂ → 3 S + 2 H₂O). Burn exactly one third and the effluent arrives at precisely 2 H₂S per SO₂, so neither reagent is left over — which is why air demand, not catalyst, is the manipulated variable in every real Claus plant. Off-ratio, the excess reagent walks straight through to the tail gas and recovery is capped by a stoichiometric ceiling min(3phi, 3(1-phi)/2) that no amount of catalyst can beat. Run the built-in combustion-fraction sweep to see it: recovery peaks at 95.3% at phi = 1/3 and falls away symmetrically — 85.8% at phi = 0.30 and also 85.8% at phi = 0.40, 71.5% at phi = 0.25 and also at phi = 0.50, because the ceiling's two branches cross at one third. Air demand is not symmetric though (128.6 vs 171.4 mol/s at those same two points), so over-firing costs blower duty on top of the lost sulfur. At the design point the unit makes 57.17 mol/s of liquid sulfur from 60 mol/s of H₂S against a 142.9 mol/s air demand, and the 2.84 mol/s of sulfur reaching the tail gas is still at exactly 2:1 H₂S/SO₂ — the unconverted reagents leave in the ratio they were fed, which is what a tail-gas treating unit downstream is sized for. The air's 112.9 mol/s of nitrogen passes through into the tail gas, which is why the tail gas is 213.8 mol/s against 100 of acid gas and the stream table balances only once that air is counted: the unit draws it, it is not a stream on the sheet. The sulfur atom balance closes exactly (60.000 mol/s S in, 57.165 as liquid sulfur + 2.835 in the tail gas). Staging is why two beds get to 95%: each converts a fraction of what is left, so X_total = 1 - (1-X_thermal)*prod(1-X_i) — 0.65 thermal then 0.70 and 0.55 catalytic.

Reference model (three-lump riser)

FCC riser: the gasoline optimum

A fluid catalytic cracking riser — the unit that makes most of a refinery's gasoline — showing the one result that decides how you run it. Gas oil cracks to gasoline, but gasoline overcracks to gas and coke, and the catalyst deactivates as coke lays down. Those three together mean gasoline goes through a MAXIMUM in contact time: past the optimum, running the riser harder destroys product while conversion keeps climbing. Open the sensitivity and the curve draws itself — that hump is the whole point. A first-order network (all hydrocracker can express) makes gasoline rise monotonically with conversion and would recommend exactly the wrong operation. The cat/oil ratio is computed, not chosen: cracking is endothermic and the only heat source is the sensible heat of hot regenerated catalyst, so the circulation follows from a heat balance and lands in the real 5-10 band. That is the number tying the riser to the regenerator an operator actually turns — raise the regenerator temperature and watch it fall. The rate constants here are illustrative and are NOT any real feed's kinetics. The unit op deliberately ships none: an FCC lump matrix is regressed from one feed on one catalyst, it is licensor-proprietary, and a fabricated one would decide the answer while looking authoritative. A riser without constants fails validation and says why. Bring your own regression and this becomes your riser. Bounded: three lumps (no per-cut gasoline detail), isothermal riser (a real one drops 30-60 K as the endotherm bites), no catalyst/vapour slip, and no regenerator — coke burn and the air rate are a separate unit this does not model.

Reference model (hydrotreater separator train)

Hydrotreater HP separator (Chao-Seader)

The high-pressure separator on a hydrotreater: reactor effluent — mostly hydrogen, with light ends and liquid product — is flashed hot and at pressure to recover recycle gas overhead, then let down to release the dissolved gas from the product. This runs on Chao-Seader, the semi-empirical K-value method refiners actually use for hydrogen-rich hydrocarbon systems, and which the app offers but no example used. It is not a relabelled cubic: K = gamma*nu/phi builds the liquid fugacity from the Curl-Pitzer corresponding-states correlation and the activity from regular-solution theory, with SRK supplying only the vapour fugacity. On this feed it lands at 89.2% vaporised and 61.7% recycle-gas hydrogen, against Peng-Robinson's 91.7% / 59.3% and SRK's 90.4% / 60.2% — a real, if modest, difference on the number a recycle-compressor is sized from. Honest about what is approximate: the package ships as Chao-Seader, and the Grayson-Streed 1963 special coefficients for hydrogen are a documented follow-up rather than transcribed, so the HYDROGEN K itself comes from the general correlation and is approximate — it saturates the solver's K bound here. Read the hydrocarbon splits and the phase fractions, which is what the method is good at; do not read the H₂ K-value as rigorous. Chao-Seader is a K-value method only, so enthalpy and density come from the inherited SRK — the pairing Aspen also uses.

Stop fighting legacy software. Build your first flowsheet in 60 seconds.