Pre-design of Biphenyl Chemical Factory from Benzene with Capacity of 10.000 Ton Per Year

The design of a biphenyl chemical plant from benzene with a capacity of 10,000 tons/year will be built in Tuban, East Java with a land area of ​​10,010 m2. The raw material in the form of Benzene is obtained from Trans-Pacific Petrochemical Indotama (TPPI), Tuban. The factory is designed to operate continuously for 330 days, 24 hours per day, and requires 214 employees. Biphenyl preparation begins with reacting benzene (2,807.74 kg/hour) in a Pipe Flow Reactor (R-01) at a reactor temperature of 377 oC and a pressure of 2 atm. This reaction takes place with a conversion of 90% and is endothermic so that a Hitech heater is used to maintain the operating temperature. The products that come out of the reactor are biphenyl and hydrogen. It is then cooled and condensed in a Partial Condenser (CD-01) to a temperature of 151 oC. Then enter into Separator-02 (SP-02) to separate hydrogen from a mixture of benzene, toluene and biphenyl. Hydrogen in the gas phase as a result of the separtor. The bottom product in the form of benzene, toluene and biphenyl in the liquid phase is pumped and put into a distillation tower (MD-01) to purify the product with the bottom product in the form of biphenyl with a purity of 99.3%. The result of the distillation tower is benzene and its impurities are recycled as feed into the reactor with a temperature of 83 oC and a pressure of 1 atm. This factory requires Fixed Capital (FC) Rp. 34,341,856,338,- + US$ 4,195,836, Working Capital (WC) (Rp. 127,536,505,173,- + US$ 170,019), Manufacturing Cost (MC) (Rp. 254,092,040,390,- + US$ 816,090), and General Expenses (GE) (Rp. 33,990,417,539,- + US$ 81,609). Economic analysis shows the value of ROI before tax is 50.38 % and the value of ROI after tax is 32.75%. POT before tax is 1.65 years and POT after tax is 2.34 years. The BEP value is 43.11% and the SDP value is 23.75%. The interest rate in DCF for 10 years is 19% on average. Thus, from a technical and economic point of view, a biphenyl plant from benzene with a capacity of 10,000 tons/year is worthy of consideration.

Increasing the efficiency of the partial oil removal column

The operation of the primary oil refining unit is considered. An analysis of the operation of the operating column K-1 showed that there are noticeable fluctuations in the operating mode of the apparatus in the summer and cold season, as a result, a change in the temperature of the column top and a deterioration in the clarity of fraction rectification were observed. To study the methods of adjusting the parameters of the K-1 topping column, a computational experiment was carried out using the UniSim Design modeling system, in which the models of the apparatus and the installation model as a whole were formed. The Peng-Robinson method was used as a mathematical package for calculating the thermodynamic properties of the mixture components. Comparison of the calculated performance of the two options for the equipment of the column K-1. According to the first version, the operation of the K-1 column was simulated, in which the raw material enters the 19 tray, the hot stream is fed to the bottom of the column to the 24 tray, oil reflux to the 5 tray, acute irrigation and a partial condenser are used. Unstable technological regimes of the column top were observed in this variant in industrial conditions. To assess the fundamental possibility of changing the hardware design of the K-1 column, another option was chosen, in which there is no acute irrigation and oil irrigation, at the same time, upper circulating irrigation was introduced from the 5th to the 1st tray with cooling the flow and the technological scheme of forming and feeding the hot jet was preserved. Comparison of the fractional compositions of the topped oil showed that for the considered options, there are practically similar calculated estimates, while the use of upper circulating irrigation allows not only to unload the upper part of the distillation column from the heat load, but also to use a significant heat flow of the cooler of the upper circulating irrigation for preheating oil , which will also reduce the consumption of liquid fuel for furnaces.

Operation Strategies to Minimize Methanol Recovery in Batch Distillation of Hydroalcoholic Mixtures

This work focuses on applying dynamic simulation to explore operating conditions of a packed batch distillation column for reducing the relative concentration of methanol in the distillate. Based on trial-and-error, we studied different cooling rate trajectories of the partial condenser, which has a direct impact on the reflux and distillate rates. Simulations showed that higher cooling rates and smaller cut times achieved lower relative concentrations of methanol in the distillate. Our study suggests that the best operating strategy cannot reduce the relative methanol concentration in the distillate more than 25% compared with the relative methanol concentration in the wine.

A contribution to the problem of partial condensation of a binary vapour mixture

An empirical approach has been proposed to solve the problem of partial condensation of a binary vapour mixture. The approach accounts for the effect of the intensity of cooling on the composition of the streams existing from a partial condenser at constant composition of inlet vapours.