2-HYDROXYETHYLHYDRAZINE (HEH) PLANT DESIGN Item Type text; Electronic Thesis Authors Zinsli, Phillip Alexander Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 03/10/2021 19:45:41 Item License http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/197293 2-HYDROXYETHYLHYDRAZINE (HEH) PLANT DESIGN By PHILLIP ALEXANDER ZINSLI A Thesis Submitted to The Honors College In Partial Fulfillment of the Bachelor’s degree With Honors in Chemical Engineering THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA May 2009 Approved by: _____________________________ Dr. Kimberly Ogden Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering STATEMENT BY AUTHOR I hereby grant to the University of Arizona Library the nonexclusive worldwide right to reproduce and distribute my thesis and abstract (herein, the “licensed materials”), in whole or in part, in any and all media of distribution and in any format in existence now or developed in the future. I represent and warrant to the University of Arizona that the licensed materials are my original work, that I am the sole owner of all rights in and to the licensed materials, and that none of the licensed materials infringe or violate the rights of others. I further represent that I have obtained all necessary rights to permit the University of Arizona Library to reproduce and distribute any nonpublic third party software necessary to access, display, run, or print my thesis. I acknowledge that University of Arizona Library may elect not to distribute my thesis in digital format if, in its reasonable judgment, it believes all such rights have not been secured. SIGNED: _____________________________ Abstract The goal of the project is to design a manufacturing plant with the capacity for producing 200 metric tons per year (MTPY) of military grade 2-hydroxyethylhydrazine (HEH). This is intended to serve as a replacement to the current standard liquid propellant, anhydrous hydrazine. In addition to HEH, the proposed process also produces an excess 12,770 MTPY of varying purities of hydrazine hydrate (HZH), which will be sold as a product for use in non-military applications. A process hazard analysis and a gate to gate life cycle assessment were performed on the proposed process to evaluate and minimize safety and environmental hazards. Combustion and explosion hazards from the contact of HZH with oxygen were identified as the most significant process hazard. The most significant environmental burdens of this process comes from the plant’s nearly 33 billion gallon annual water consumption and nearly 370 million kW·h annual energy requirement. A 30 year cost analysis was performed to evaluate any economic considerations. At 30 years, the investment has a net present value of $ 960,000,000 and an investor’s rate of return of 43.34 %. At a 20 % interest rate, the payback period is 2.83 years. My Contribution Individually I contributed to the group by organizing and running meetings with our mentor for this project, Dr. Greg Ogden. We had meetings as a group where we would discuss where we were individually in our tasks. From these meetings I would put together an agenda of what needed to be talked about with our mentor in our weekly meetings. At the onset of the project I was the one doing research into the different industrial methods of making hydrazine hydrate, which is an intermediate to the 2-hydroxyethyl hydrazine (HEH) product. From my research into the different production methods we made a decision that the PCUK peroxide method is the most energy efficient, most environmentally friendly and most likely lowest cost in terms of investment in process units. I did literature searches to find experimental data that could be used to model the first reactor in our system. After reading several papers and searching for data it became apparent that not all the chemicals in the process are fully understood or their properties measured. For one of the reaction intermediates thermodynamic properties had to be estimated. I estimated some of these properties while team mate Ivann Hsu estimated many others. Based on the papers, and the found and estimated thermodynamic properties, I modeled the energy requirements of the unit along with the flow rates and required to achieve our desired yearly production capacity of hydrazine hydrate and HEH. There were several unit operations in our process which were not extensively investigated in our project because of the size of the rest of the processing required. For these units it was assumed that the streams where separated and reacted perfectly. It was my responsibility to know what happened in these units so that the mass balances through the equipment could be done. There were several purification operations that were needed before our product could be considered within the required specifications of the customer. I conducted literature searches to find the best way to separate organic impurities from our product stream, as well as contacted companies to determine the best product to achieve our goals. I did the writing for all process calculations that I for the reactor, the un-modeled unit mass balances, and the purification that I researched. I also wrote the overall process rational for the report, the equipment rationale for the first reactor, as well as the overall mass balance, the block flow diagram for the process, and the final conclusions and recommendations. Joanna Emerson Joanna Emerson worked on the thermodynamic calculations and modeling of the third reaction in our process that produced our HEH product. To do this she did journal and patent searches to determine expected yields and appropriate thermodynamic data. This also included modeling in ASPEN Plus of the reactor as well as the many distillation towers required. She made sure the modeling done by the computer was as accurate as possible by confining the results to temperature, pressure, and concentration limits, that we knew could not be passed in reality. Joanna also did the calculations for the heat exchangers in the process and determined the total steam that would be required by the distillation column reboilers. Joanna contacted manufacturers about the large industrial pumps that would be required for the process. Finding these pumps greatly reduced the estimated energy and capital investment requirements compared to price correlations that would otherwise would have been used. Joanna wrote the process calculations for the reactors and distillation columns she modeled. She also wrote the equipment description and rationale for all units except for the first reactor in the process. Ivann Hsu Ivann Hsu estimated many of the thermodynamic parameters that could not be found in the literature for one of the reaction intermediates in the process. Using these estimations I was able to model the system based of off this and known data. Ivann Hsu researched and did the calculations to estimate the removal of HEH from a hydrazine hydrate stream using a gel filtration column. In addition to these calculations Ivann wrote the process calculations for thermodynamic estimations and the gel filtration units of the process. Ivann Hsu also wrote the chemical hazards section of the report. The safety statement and the environmental impact statements were written by both Ivann and Andrew Wong. These were done by finding all of the MSDS for every chemical as well as finding safety and environmental regulations that would apply for a chemical process plant producing a flammable compound with considerable storage requirements. The economic calculations were done by Ivann Hsu as well and the economic analysis for this section. This involved estimating the cost of each process unit using both published correlations as well as looking up hardware sold by vendors. By finding the purchase price of all the raw materials and selling price of the products as well as using utility prices Ivann calculated the pay back period of the proposed design as well as the investors’ rate of return and an estimate of the total cash that would be earned from a 30 year investment in the proposed plant. Andrew Wong Andrew Wong did a lot of research into the market for HEH and hydrazine hydrate. This included looking on government procurement websites and contacting current manufacturers of hydrazine. He wrote the background and premises of the report, along with using his research into the current market to write about current and possible future market for the market information section of the report. Andrew compiled all the utility tables for the report and calculated the yearly costs for electricity, water, and raw material use. These were used by Ivann in his economic calculations. Andrew also worked with Ivann on the safety statement and the environmental impact section of the report. He did extensive research into regulations governing our products and raw materials. Andrew also compiled the references used, along with the nomenclature and spent a considerable amount of time proof reading and formatting the final report. Andrew Wong is very adept at using Microsoft Visio and excel so he also worked extensively on our process flow diagrams and formatting excel documents. 2-Hydroxyethylhydrazine (HEH) Plant Design Nedgo Engineering Design Team Nedgo Engineering, LLC Date Submitted: May 1st, 2009 ___________________________ ___________________________ Phillip Zinsli Joanna Emerson Project Manager Senior Design Engineer ___________________________ ___________________________ Andrew Wong Ivann Hsu Senior Design Engineer Economics Analyst Executive Summary The goal of the following project is to design a manufacturing plant with the capacity for producing 200 metric tons per year (MTPY) of military grade 2-hydroxyethylhydrazine (HEH).