Operating Characteristics of Fluidized Bed Stripper Internals

Gas-solids fluidized bed strippers have major applications in fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) and fluid coking operations. In the FCC process, the catalyst collected by the reactor cyclones contains significant amounts of hydrocarbon products that have to be stripped out from the catalyst to avoid a loss of valuable products and excessively high temperatures in the regenerator. In a fluid coker stripper, steam is used to remove entrained and adsorbed hydrocarbons from the coke particles descending from the fluid coker reactor to minimize losses of valuable hydrocarbon products. A variety of proprietary and standard internals are in use in commercial and research facilities’ fluidized bed strippers. The most common types are disk and donut trays, horizontal sheds, and structured packings. Horizontal grating trays are also utilized but to a much lesser extent. This paper reviews the performance characteristics of fluidized bed stripper internals.