Abstract Deep catalytic cracking of crude oil can effectively enhance the production of chemicals while reducing the output of refined oil, which is the developing tendency of the petroleum industry nowadays. Reaction kinetics plays a crucial role in understanding and optimizing chemical reactions, serving as the foundation for refining reaction conditions, controlling reaction processes, and designing the reactor. In this study, kinetics of the direct catalytic cracking of paraffinic base crude oil into light olefins was investigated on a fixed‐bed reactor over a zeolite composite catalyst. The reactant and products were categorized into the raw material, dry gas/cracking gas, cracking oil, coke, ethylene, and propylene. A six‐lump kinetic model with 13 rate constants was developed, and the pre‐exponential factor and apparent activation energy were calculated using the Arrhenius equation. The activation energies for the different reaction pathways producing light olefins in this study were below 210 kJ mol −1 , with the minimum apparent activation energy being 81.91 kJ mol −1 . The calculated product yields based on the kinetic model were compared with the experimental data, revealing the relative errors of less than 15%, which confirmed that the established six‐lump kinetic model could accurately describe the cracking of crude oil over the composite catalyst. This research could facilitate precise regulation of product distribution, process intensification, and optimization of key operating parameters in the direct catalytic cracking of paraffinic base crude oil.
Zhu et al. (2026) studied this question.