Nowadays, with the worldwide, increasing demands of the high qualitative gasoline, it is necessary to establish new naphtha reforming units and develop the traditional units to the high efficiency processes. In this work, according to the recent progresses in naphtha reforming technology, a mathematical modeling of a continuous catalytic reformer with catalyst recirculation is developed for simulation and optimization of the new industrial continuous reformers. The process model uses an extended version of the kinetic model reported by Padmavathi, with some modifications on kinetic constants, and it considers the deactivation rate of the catalyst and pressure drop within the reactor. The process model is based on a 12-lumped kinetics reaction network and has been proved to be quite effective in terms of an industrial application. The naphtha is based on 25-lumped pseudocomponents (including C6 to C10 hydrocarbons) in three categories of n-paraffins, isoparaffins, naphthens, including cyclopentanes and cyclohexanes, and aromatics. The light hydrocarbons product, consisting of C1 to C5 n-paraffins, is taken into account as the products of hydrocracking reaction. First, the kinetic parameters of the reactions are tuned using real results of the outlet temperatures and components in industrial operating conditions. At the next stage, validation of the model was carried out using a new naphtha feed in industrial scale. The final stage of this research was based on splitting a naphtha feed using its only ASTM boiling point and specific gravity, to converting to the components and applying into the process model to predict the outlet temperature and composition, the reformate yield and RON, hydrogen and LPG product, and coke formation at each cycle. The predicted and commercially reported results agreed with each other.
