Patent ID: 7582201

Claim:
A process for cracking liquid hydrocarbon feed in a system for cracking gaseous hydrocarbons, the process comprising the steps of: (a) feeding a liquid hydrocarbon feed stream to a thermal cracker to provide a vaporized hydrocarbon feed stream; (b) cracking the vaporized hydrocarbon feed stream in the thermal cracker to produce a cracked effluent; (c) feeding the cracked effluent from the thermal cracker to a primary transfer line heat exchanger (TLE); (d) feeding a first quench fluid into the cracked effluent from the primary TLE to quench the cracked effluent; (e) feeding a mixture of the cracked effluent from the primary TLE and the first quench fluid to a first separator; (f) separating the effluent/first quench fluid mixture in the first separator to separate the mixture into a first separator bottoms stream comprising tar and a first separator product stream; (g) feeding the first separator product stream to a second separator; (h) feeding a second separator quench fluid to the second separator to quench the first separator product stream in the second separator; (i) separating in the second separator, a second separator bottoms stream comprising tar and a second separator product stream comprising an olefin product; and (j) recovering an olefin product from the second separator product stream; and further comprising the step of treating the second separator bottoms stream with added light aromatic solvent in a solvation process to separate tar from at least one of water, solvent, and quench oil, wherein the step of treating the second separator bottoms stream in a solvation process comprises: (i) treating the second separator bottoms in a quench drum; and (ii) recovering from the quench drum, the second quench fluid; and the added light aromatic solvent is added to at least one of the second separator bottoms and the recovered second quench fluid.