Optimal Design and Analysis of High Purity Isobutene Process via Synthesis and Decomposition of Mtbe

Project: National Science and Technology CouncilNational Science and Technology Council Academic Grants

Project Details

Abstract

High purity isobutene has high economic value added. Traditionally, it is difficult to separate the isobutene and n-butene in the C4 streams from refinery fluid catalytic cracking units. It is reported methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) production can separate the isobutene from the linear butenes due to its higher reactivity to methanol over acid resin catalysts. The optimal conditions of four different configurations for production of MTBE first considered by Kim and Douglas (2002) have been explored in depth in our previous study. Two feeds include pure methanol feed and C4 feed containing 35.6 mol% isobutene and 64.4 mol% inert n-butene are considered. Under the specifications set as 98 mol% MTBE purity and 197 mol/s MTBE production rate, economic analysis shows the reactive distillation (RD) processes are better than the conventional reaction/separation processes. Moreover, the process with single RD column has the least total annual cost (TAC). Thus, the stream of bottom products of this single RD process is then fed to the MTBE decomposition section for recovering isobutylene and methanol. It is known the process of MTBE decomposition would possess higher conversion in gas-phase reaction. Therefore, the optimal conditions of three different configurations for gas-phase MTBE decomposition, an isothermal reactor with a separator, single RD column, and a pre-reactor with a RD column, are then investigated by comparing the total annual cost in this work. Finally, under the specifications set as 98 mol% isobutene purity and 94 mol% methanol purity, economic analysis demonstrates that the conventional reaction/separation process for gas-phase MTBE decomposition are better than the reactive distillation processes due to its lower energy consumption.

Project IDs

Project ID:PB10507-2516
External Project ID:MOST105-2221-E182-075
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date01/08/1631/07/17

Keywords

  • High purity isobutene
  • Synthesis and decomposition of MTBE
  • Reactive distillation
  • Total annual

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