METHOD FOR THERMAL CLEAVAGE OF HYDROCARBONS, IN PARTICULAR FOR PRODUCING OLEFINS, AND PLANT Russian patent published in 2003 - IPC

FIELD: petrochemical processes. SUBSTANCE: method is implemented in furnace designed for cleaving hydrocarbon/water steam mixture at 750 to 900 C followed by immediately cooling thus formed hydrogen-containing cracking gas in cracking gas cooler to ca. 650 C. When heavy products are present cracking gas is additionally sharply cooled and heavy oil and gasoline are then separated. Cracking gas containing light products is sharply cooled to remove water steam, compressed to 20 bar, dried to remove the rest of water, cooled on deep cooling installation, and passed to several rectification columns to recover light products. According to invention, part of hydrogen is extracted from cracking gas upstream from deep cooling installation using membrane diffusion technique. Olefin production plant is also described. EFFECT: enhanced process efficiency. 15 cl, 3 dwg