Aspen Plus®
HDPE Production Process
Simulation of HDPE slurry phase reactor using Aspen Plus®
Compatible with
Aspen Plus® v10 or Higher
Authors
Alireza Bahrami
Hamid Reza Norouzi
Aspen Plus®
HDPE Production Process
Amirkabir University of Technology Center of Engineering and Multiscale Modeling of Fluid Flow
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HDPE Production Process
Document history
Revision Description Date
Rev. 1.00 Final changes and refinements. 09-Jan-2021
Rev 0.02 Final draft was prepared. 03-Dec-2020
Rev 0.01 The tutorial was reviewed and commented 01-Dec-2020
Rev 0 The first draft was prepared. 23-Nov-2020
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HDPE Production Process
Table of Contents
Page
Title
Problem Definition .................................................................................................................................. 4
Solution ................................................................................................................................................... 4
New simulation ................................................................................................................................... 4
Component specification .................................................................................................................... 5
Polymers characterization .................................................................................................................. 5
Property model specification .............................................................................................................. 7
Flowsheet development ......................................................................................................................... 9
FEED Stream ........................................................................................................................................ 9
Reactor .............................................................................................................................................. 10
Results ................................................................................................................................................... 15
Sensitivity analysis ................................................................................................................................ 16
References ............................................................................................................................................ 19
APPENDIX .............................................................................................................................................. 19
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HDPE Production Process
Problem Definition
Consider a stream with the specified composition in Table 1 at pressure 200 KPa and temperature
358.15 K that enters the reactor as feed for the HDPE production process. The slurry phase reactor
model is CSTR and operates at803.51 kPa. Volume of the reactor is 30.60 m3 and there is a
thermodynamic equilibrium between the vapor and the slurry phase. Simulate the reactor and
calculate the molecular mass distribution of the polymer (HDPE) in the reactor exit.
Table1. The values of the components involved in the process
Component Mass flow rate [kg/hr]
Titanium tetrachloride (Catalyst) 8.99
Triethylaluminium (Co-catalyst) 8.99
Ethylene (Monomer) 5999.70
Hydrogen (Chain transfer agent) 0.3
n-Hexane (Solvent) 53982
Note: You can find the simulation file this flowsheet online on www.cemf.ir alongside this tutorial
file.
Solution
New simulation
1. Start a new Aspen Plus® simulation with Polymers with Met_C bar_hr Units template.
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1
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HDPE Production Process
Component specification
2. In the Data Browser, find Component Specification through root Components/Specifications, define
include all the involved components in the simulation. The component ID is what you see in your input
and output sheets of the software. So, you can change these IDs as shown below. Also select polymer
and segment as type for HDPE and C2H4-R, respectively.
C2H4-R refers to the undeveloped polymer chain at the end of which is a vacant site for
Hint!
reaction and allows the monomer to bind and the polymer chain to propagate.
Polymers characterization
3-1. In the Data Browser, find Polymers-characterization through root
Components/Polymers/Characterization. In the Segment tab, select C2H4-R as the Repeat unit. Use
this sheet to specify the type of all polymer and oligomer segments. Segments are the building blocks
that participate in the polymer or oligomer chain. Segments can be repeated units, end groups, or
branch points attached to three or four branches.
3-2. In Polymers tab, select the properties or component attributes that Aspen should tracked for the
produced polymers. Component attributes keep track of polymer properties such as degree of
polymerization, molecular weight, copolymer composition, etc. To do this, select the Ziegler-Nata
Selection in the Built-in attributes group section. You will see a list of catalyst attributes below it. Site
based component attributes are also available to simulate multi-site type Ziegler-Natta catalyst
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HDPE Production Process
polymerization. Composite attributes are summed over all site types. They represent the average
properties of the polymer.
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HDPE Production Process
3-3. In Site-Based Species tab, specify the structure and activity of site-based catalytic species such as
coordination catalysts and ionic initiators. Polymerization reactions such as Ziegler-Natta
polymerization and Ionic polymerization use multi-site catalytic species. Each site is responsible for
producing polymer chains with different characteristics. Specify the number of site types in the
Number of sites for the catalyst. You must also specify the moles of sites per gram of catalyst (as shown
in the figure below).
Component attributes are used to track multi-site heterogeneous polymerization (Ziegler-
Natta) catalyst site activity, in terms of mole flow and the fraction of potential, inhibited,
Hint!
vacant, and dead sites. The occupied sites are not tracked since that information may be
obtained from the live polymer zeroth moment of chain length distribution.
Property model specification
4-1. In the Data Browser, find Properties Specification through root Properties/Methods/Specification
form. In Global tab, Select PC-SAFT as the base method and in Referenced tab, add PC-SAFT as the
Referenced methods from Available methods list.
4-2. The PC-SAFT parameters for components TiCl4 and TEA are not available in the data bank. You
need to define the required scalar parameters of these components. Go to
Properties/Methods/Parameters/Pure Components, add a New pure component scalar parameter
(name it “PC-SAFT”) and enter the values of each parameter according to what is shown in the figure.
Then click next button (N→) to review the binary interactions for this EOS.
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HDPE Production Process
1 2
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HDPE Production Process
Flowsheet development
FEED Stream
5. From Module Palette, drag a material stream into the Main flowsheet window and rename it (using
Ctrl+M) to FEED. Double click on this stream to open stream specification form. Complete the feed
condition as shown here.
6. In the Components Attributes section, enter the following values for each of the catalyst attributes:
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HDPE Production Process
Table2. The values of the components Attributes [1]
Attributes ID Value Unit
CPSFLOW 1 [mol]
CPSFRAC 1 [-]
CVSFLOW 0 [mol]
CVSFRAC 0 [-]
CISFLOW 0 [mol]
CISFRAC 0 [-]
CDSFLOW 0 [mol]
CDSFRAC 0 [-]
Component attributes are used to track multi-site heterogeneous polymerization (Ziegler-
Natta) catalyst site activity, in terms of mole flow and fraction of potential, inhibited,
vacant, and dead sites. The site types are defined as follows:
• Potential Sites - sites that are not yet activated.
Note
• Vacant Site – sites that are activated without a growing polymer attached.
• Inhibited Sites - activated sites that are temporarily in inactive state.
• Dead Sites - sites that have permanently lost their catalytic activity.
• Occupied Sites - activated sites with a growing polymer attached.
Reactor
7. From Module Palette, Reactor tab, drag a RCSTR and connect the FEED stream to its inlet port. Drag
two material streams into the flowsheet and connect them to the Product ports (one as the slurry
phase outlet stream and the other as the vapor phase outlet stream). Rename them to LIQPROD &
VAPPROD, as shown:
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HDPE Production Process
To connect the FEED stream to the CSTR, right-click on FEED and select the Reconnect
Hint!
Destination to set the stream destination to the reactor inlet.
1.Click here
8. Double click on the CSTR to open the reactor specification form. Complete the operating conditions
and output stream phases here. In Specifications tab, select Vapor-liquid mode as the Valid phases
and enter the value 0.1 for the volume fraction of the vapor phase. Then, in Streams tab select liquid
and vapor phase for LIQPROD and VAPPROD, respectively.
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HDPE Production Process
9. In Reactions tab, click New button and enter R-1 for this new reaction set. Then, Select ZIGLER-NAT
from the menu and then move R-1 to Selected Reaction Sets.
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HDPE Production Process
3
2.Click here
4
10-1. In the Data Browser, Go to Reactions/R-1, and fill in the blanks in Species tab with the proper
values as shown below.
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10-2. In Reactions tab, click on Generate Reactions button. Then, remove the reactions that are not
listed in Table 3.
Table 3. Literature Data of Pre-Exponential Kinetic Rate Constants [2]
Reaction Name Reaction Types Reactants Site1 Site2 Site3 Site4 Unit
Spontaneous activation ACT-SPON Cps[TiCl4] 186.9 370.2 128.38 497.97 [L/mol.s]
Chain initiation CHAIN-INI Po 456.3 1.686 0.655 4.05 [L/mol.s]
Propagation PROPAGATION Pn[C2H4] + C2H4 240 270 310 16 [L/mol.s]
Chain transfer to monomer CHAT-MON Pn[C2h4] + C2h4 0.986 0.303 0.27 0.005 [L/mol.s]
Chain transfer to hydrogen CHAT-H2 Pn[C2h4] + H2 5.55 18.5 0.002 2.7e-06 [L/mol.s]
Chain transfer to Spontaneous CHAT-SPON Pn[C2h4] 0.002 0.001 0.00035 8.7e-10 [L/mol.s]
Spontaneous deactivation DEACT-SPON Po/Pn 0.002 0.00098 0.00034 0 [L/mol.s]
* The order of chain transfer to hydrogen was considered one instead of the original value of 0.5 in the reference.
1
2.Click here
10-3. In Rate Constant tab, Enter the values in Pre-Exp column using Table 3. Set the unit of these
values to 1/sec.
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HDPE Production Process
1 2.Enter Pre-Exp values from Table3
11. Click Run button () from Home tab or press F5 to run the simulation. Then Double click on the
CSTR block to see the results. From the top ribbon, in the plot section, select the Chain Size
Distribution to plot the size distribution of each site and combined sites.
2. Double click here.
3. Click here.
Results
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12. Check the Select All to show the molecular weight distribution and chain size distribution of all
active sites.
Check this.
13. In the design tab, select Molecular weight distribution (MWD) to plot data.
Select this.
The above figure shows the normalized molecular weight distribution (MWD) for HDPE polymer CSTR,
in the outlet stream based on two calculation methods for average molecular properties:
instantaneous distribution and moments of distribution. Notice that MWW = MWN × PDI. For more
information on molecular weight distribution properties, see APPENDIX.
Sensitivity analysis
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A sensitivity analysis was carried out to see the effect of H2 flow rate in the FEED stream on the HDPE
polymer properties such as MWN and MWW. The following figure, shows Vary and Define tab setup
form of the sensitivity analysis tool in Aspen. The mass flow rate of H2 is varied from 0 to 1 kg/h. MWW
and MWN are defined as Compattr-Var in LIQPROD stream (you can find sensitivity analysis tool in
path Data Browser/Model analysis tool/Sensitivity).
5.Click here
7
8
The following two figures show the variations of MWN and MWW as functions of H2 flow rate in the
FEED stream. Notice that both MWN and MWW decrease as H2 flow rate is increased, indicating that
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H2 competes with the propagation of repeat unit C2H4 and prematurely terminates active site
propagation.
19800
19600
19400
19200
MWN [gr.mol-1]
19000
18800
18600
18400
18200
18000
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
H2 Mass flow [kg.hr-1]
(a)
55500
55000
54500
MWW [gr.mol-1]
54000
53500
53000
52500
52000
51500
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
H2 Mass flow [kg.hr-1]
(b)
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References
[1] K. Al-Malah, Aspen plus, 1st ed. USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2016, pp. 325-360. Available:
10.1002/aic.14527 [Accessed 22 November 2020].
[2] C. Zhang, Z. Shao, X. Chen, Z. Yao, X. Gu and L. Biegler, "Kinetic parameter estimation of HDPE
slurry process from molecular weight distribution: Estimability analysis and multistep
methodology", AIChE Journal, vol. 60, no. 10, pp. 3442-3459, 2014. Available: 10.1002/aic.14527
[Accessed 22 November 2020].
APPENDIX
The number average molecular weight (MWN) and weight average molecular weight (MWW)
The average properties of the polymer chain can be calculated as ratios of the moments. The number-
average degree of polymerization (DPN) is the ratio of the first to the zeroth moments, 𝜆1∕𝜆0. On the
other hand, the weight-average degree of polymerization (DPW) is the ratio of the second to the first
moments, 𝜆2∕𝜆1. In general, for a polymer with a chain length distribution, the nth moment is given by:
N
λm = ∑ nm Qn A-1
n=1
where
𝜆 Moment
m Moment order
n Chain length or degree of polymerization
Qn Number of moles of polymer of length n
The polymer average chain length and weight properties are then calculated as follows:
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λ1 FMOM
DPN=Number-Average degree of polymerization= = A-2
λ0 ZMOM
λ2 SMOM
DPW=Weight-Average degree of polymerization= = A-3
λ1 FMOM
λ2
DPW (λ1 ) (λ2 ×λ0 ) (SMOM×ZMOM)
PDI=Poly dispersity index= = = = A-4
DPN (λ1 ) (λ1 )2 (FMOM)2
λ0
MWN=Number-Average molecular weight=DPN×Msegment A-5
MWW=Weight-Average molecular weight=DPW×Msegment A-6
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