Mega Crackers - Where is the limit?

The size of steam cracking plants has increased significantly over the last two decades. Currently the biggest plants built have around 1,500 kta* ethylene capacity. Looking at this trend, Linde has studied its design to find any constrain in building a 2,000 kta* ethylene cracker. Starting with some basic design criteria, this presentation is going through the major process units and key equipment and is giving some insight to the actual limits of furnaces, rotating equipment, columns, heat exchangers and piping design. The results are promising and surely in a few years we will see the next generation of Mega Crackers.

*kta = one thousand metric tons per year