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Chemical Process Design for Manufacture of Xylene Isomers

Guy Francis Mongelli

According to the World Energy Outlook, the demand for coal will increase if conservative measures are not taken. As a result, carbon dioxide emissions will increase from coal use. Current manufacturing facilities use a large amount of external utilities, but measures can be taken to reduce the amount of energy such a facility needs by using energy generated from process streams. Using process data from a process of toluene conversion, the energy requirements for a pilot scale and full-scale manufacturing plant were minimized using pinch analysis and the resulting heat exchanger network was designed. A cost analysis was performed to determine the monetary savings associated with the new plant design, as well as the amount of coal saved as a result. Since para-xylene is the most valuable xylene isomer produced, the production of the isomer was optimized by modeling the concentration profiles with several reactor systems. The dynamics of a heat exchanger were examined and modeled using the heat exchanger equation. The temperature profile as a function of both time and exchanger position was obtained using both a finite element analysis and using an analytical solution.