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Plant Design Project

The document summarizes a plant design project to produce 1 x 10^7 kg/year of methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) using secondary butyl alcohol as a feedstock. The process involves pumping the butyl alcohol to a preheater and vaporizer before reacting it at 400-500°C over a zinc oxide brass catalyst, converting 90% to MEK. The reaction products are then cooled and separated, with MEK recovered through condensation or absorption and extraction. Key process data, cost data, reactor design equations, and material balances are provided.

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Abhishek Sagar
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306 views8 pages

Plant Design Project

The document summarizes a plant design project to produce 1 x 10^7 kg/year of methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) using secondary butyl alcohol as a feedstock. The process involves pumping the butyl alcohol to a preheater and vaporizer before reacting it at 400-500°C over a zinc oxide brass catalyst, converting 90% to MEK. The reaction products are then cooled and separated, with MEK recovered through condensation or absorption and extraction. Key process data, cost data, reactor design equations, and material balances are provided.

Uploaded by

Abhishek Sagar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPSX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Plant Design Project

H S Pavan Kumar (CH19BTECH11010)


Abhishek Sagar (CH19BTECH11021)
Methyl Ethyl Ketone From
Butyl Alcohol
The Project

● Design a Plant to produce 1 x 10^7 kg/year of methyl ethyl ketone (MEK)


● Feedstock: Secondary butyl alcohol.
● Services available:
● Dry saturated steam at 140 C.
● Cooling water at 14 C.
● Electricity at 440V three-phase 50 Hz.
● Flue gases at 540 C.
The Process

The butyl alcohol is pumped from storage to a steam-heated preheater and then to a
vaporizer heated by the reaction products. The vapor leaving the vaporizer is heated to its
reaction temperature by flue gases that have previously been used as reactor heating medium.
The superheated butyl alcohol is fed to the reaction system at 400C to 500C where 90% is
converted on a zinc oxide brass catalyst to methyl ethyl ketone, hydrogen, and other reaction
products. The reaction products may be treated in one of the following ways:
●Cool and condense the MEK in the reaction products and use the exhaust gases as a
furnace fuel.
●Cool the reaction products to a suitable temperature and separate the MEK by absorption in
aqueous ethanol. The hydrogen off gas is dried and used as a furnace fuel. The liquors
leaving the absorbers are passed to a solvent extraction column, where the MEK is
recovered using trichloroethane. The raffinate from this column is returned to the absorber
and the extract is passed to a distillation unit where the MEK is recovered. The
trichloroethane is recycled to the extraction plant.
Data

1. Process Data
a. Outlet condenser temperature 1⁄4 32C.
b. Vapor and liquid are in equilibrium at the condenser outlet. Calorific value of MEK = 41,800 kJ/kg.
2. Cost Data
a. Selling price of MEK = $2.0 per kg
3. Reactor Data
a. The ‘‘shortcut’’ method proposed in Reference 1 may be used only to obtain a preliminary estimate
of the height of catalyst required in the reactor. The reactor should be designed from first
principles using the rate equation, below, taken from Reference 1:

where PA,i, PH,i, and PK,i are the interfacial partial pressures of the alcohol, hydrogen, and ketone in
bars, and the remaining quantities are as specified by the semi-empirical equations below:
In these equations, the interfacial temperature Ti is in Kelvin, the constant C is in kmol/m2h, KA is
in /bar, and KAK is dimensionless.

The equilibrium constant, K, is given in Reference 1 (although the original source is Reference 2) by
the equation:
Material Balances

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