Plant Design for the Production of 2-Ethylhexanol from Propylene and Synthesis Gas

Abstract

Original Research Article The design of a plant for the production of 72,000 tonnes per year of 2-ethylhexanol was considered in this work. The unit operations considered in the plant was separator; reactor and distillation column, the design models for the separator, plug flow reactor and distillation column are presented. The process flow diagram showing the unit operations was designed and simulated with Aspen Hysys and MS Excel used for the plotting of results. The plug flow reactor was designed with fractional conversion, xA = 0.99 for volume of reactor = 2.5 x 10 -5 m 3 , diameter of reactor = 0.02539m, length of reactor = 0.05078m, space time = 5.76 x 10 -6 hr, space velocity = 173711.6hr -1 , heat generated per unit volume = -5.61 x10 6 KJ and pressure drop = 2.61 x 10 -10 Pa. Diameter of distillation column = 1.473192m, distillation column down comer area = 0.204545 m 2 and distillation column weir length = 1.119626m while separator had the following parameter; area of packed bed column = 4.440853m 2 , diameter = 2.377871m and height = 31.66393m. The values of a design parameters of the plug flow reactor, distillation column and separator showed optimum results and reliable based on standard specification.