Imbalanced burner heat release for enhanced ethylene yield in industrial-scale cracking furnaces
Abstract
Symmetric burner arrangements with uniform heat release are the default design for cracking furnaces. However, the present study reveals that this symmetric layout leads to inferior heating conditions and reduced ethylene yields in specific coils. Therefore, an imbalanced heating strategy is proposed: side burners are grouped by location, with the fuel flow rate of Group L set to four times that of Group R while maintaining the same total fuel consumption. This approach increases the heat load on the disadvantaged coils by up to 2.65% and boosts their ethylene yields by nearly 10%, improving the overall average yield by 4.09%. Remarkably, even with Group R fully shut off, the averaged ethylene yield increases by 3.86%, demonstrating that highly imbalanced heating strategy outperforms the conventional symmetric arrangement. Given the limited yield improvements achieved under the conventional framework over decades, a new operational philosophy for high-efficiency cracking furnaces is warranted.
Related
- Enhancing Ethylene Yields and Energy Efficiency in Industrial Cracking Furnaces via Spatial Heat-Flux Optimization
- Nanoscale design of an ethylene tetraaniline-bipyridine-based crystalline covalent organic framework for enhanced hydrogen evolution reaction.
- Wind Furnaces of the Atacama Salt Flat, Northern Chile: Copper Extractive Metallurgy at the Edge of Qhapaq Ñan
- Upcycling Secondary Cellulosic Fibres and Post-Industrial Recycled Polypropylene from Household Appliance Manufacturing into Circular Composites with Enhanced Dimensional Stability
- Visible-Light-Driven Photoreduction of Industrial-Grade Graphene Oxide into Single-/Few-Layer Reduced Graphene Oxide Nanosheets: Structural Evolution and Enhanced Electrochemical Energy-Storage Performance
BibTeX
@misc{jia2026imbalanced,
title = {{Imbalanced burner heat release for enhanced ethylene yield in industrial-scale cracking furnaces}},
author = {Zhigang Jia and Cancan Jia and Yanan Duan},
howpublished = {ChemRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.26434/chemrxiv.15010853/v1},
url = {https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15010853/v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Imbalanced burner heat release for enhanced ethylene yield in industrial-scale cracking furnaces
AU - Zhigang Jia
AU - Cancan Jia
AU - Yanan Duan
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/22
PB - ChemRxiv
DO - 10.26434/chemrxiv.15010853/v1
UR - https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15010853/v1
AB - Symmetric burner arrangements with uniform heat release are the default design for cracking furnaces. However, the present study reveals that this symmetric layout leads to inferior heating conditions and reduced ethylene yields in specific coils. Therefore, an imbalanced heating strategy is proposed: side burners are grouped by location, with the fuel flow rate of Group L set to four times that of Group R while maintaining the same total fuel consumption. This approach increases the heat load on the disadvantaged coils by up to 2.65% and boosts their ethylene yields by nearly 10%, improving the overall average yield by 4.09%. Remarkably, even with Group R fully shut off, the averaged ethylene yield increases by 3.86%, demonstrating that highly imbalanced heating strategy outperforms the conventional symmetric arrangement. Given the limited yield improvements achieved under the conventional framework over decades, a new operational philosophy for high-efficiency cracking furnaces is warranted.
ER -