Embedding of Shock Wave Reactor in Thermal Cracking Process for Ethylene
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Embedding of Shock Wave Reactor in Thermal Cracking Process for Ethylene May 2007 Erdin Kocak Embedding of Shock Wave Reactor in Thermal Cracking Process for Ethylene Delft, May 2007 Ing. Erdin Kocak Delft University of Technology (TUD), Hoogvlietstraat 22 Department of Chemical Technology 3081 SV Rotterdam and Material Science, Tel: 0618525974 Sub-Faculty Chemical Process Technology Studentno: 1193457 Section Product & Process Engineering Supervisors: Dr.ir. P.J.T. Verheijen (TUD) Ir. Ing. Marco van Goethem (TUD) Dr.ir. J.R. van Ommen (TUD) 2 Preface I would like to thank Marco van Goethem for al the effort he took to help me with this project. It was a very learning project. I also want to thank Peter Verheijen and Ruud van Ommen. My biggest thanks go to my parents, which helped me to take a proper education. 3 Summary The goal of this project was to embed the Shock Wave Reactor (SWR) into an ethylene plant in order to assess the performance of this unique reactor. The performances are based on the energy consumption and ethylene yield. There are some researches done. Unfortunately no information is found in articles about how to embed the SWR in an ethylene plant. So, to embed the SWR, the behavior of the whole plant must be monitored. The embedding of the SWR in an ethylene plant is done by integration this reactor in an ethylene plant based on conventional cracking. Conventional cracking is done by a furnace. The only different is the cracking reactor. The separation configuration is taken the same. Strong GDP (gross domestic product) growth in major regions results in strong petrochemical demand growth. The reason of this growth is due to the growing market of China and India. So the importance of ethylene increases. Ethylene is and in the future still be an important bulk chemistry in the petrochemical and industry The process chemistry with its thermodynamics and kinetics are based in earlier research done by R.Bosma. Normally more than 1 million reactions occur during ethane cracking but here 7 major reactions are used. The residence time plays a big role in this cracking. Thermodynamically high temperature is favorable but kinetically not. High temperatures increase the secondary reactions with more by-products as result. The SWR was already modeled in Matlab by R.Bosma [21]. To investigate the SWR energy consumption, the SWR is modeled in Aspen. A user model in Aspen has been made, which reflects the behavior of the SWR at some given conditions. This Aspen model is validated in order to determine the reliability of this model. The model is successfully made but some parameters where slightly different. With Aspen Pinch, the determination of the energy consumption is made. This is very important because the energy consumption will conclude if this SWR economical favorable compared with a conventional furnace. Also the environmental impact of the SWR has been studied. It is known in the aviation industry, shock waves produce a lot of sound power. It can have a certain risk to the human health and environment. This is a complex problem because of the difficulties to monitor the sound behavior of this reactor. It is concluded that the SWR is an energy slurping process compared with a conventional furnace. The ethylene yield is also lower than the ethylene yield produced with a conventional furnace. 4 Nomenclature SWR Shock Wave Reactor GDP Gross Domestic Product SDF Steam Dilution Factor TLE Transfer Line Exchange NRC Noise Reduction Coefficient TC0 Reservoir temperature of the Shock Wave Reactor (K) TC1 Pyrolysis temperature (K) T2 Temperature after mixing the hydrocarbon with steam (K) T3 Temperature after shock (K) P Overall sound power (W) -12 P0 Reference value sound power (10 ) Lw Overall sound intensity (dB) Ei Activation energy (kJ/mole) 5 TABLE OF CONTENT 1 Introduction.........................................................................................................11 1.1 Importance of ethylene ................................................................................11 1.1.1 Ethylene production from different feedstock’s ..................................12 1.1.2 Gas Feeds [9] .......................................................................................13 1.2 Shock wave reactor......................................................................................14 1.3 Objective research .......................................................................................15 1.4 Research approach.......................................................................................15 1.5 Content chapters ..........................................................................................16 2 Process options and selection .............................................................................18 2.1 Process chemistry ........................................................................................18 2.1.1 Thermodynamics..................................................................................18 2.1.2 Kinetics................................................................................................19 2.2 Shock Wave Reactor....................................................................................21 2.2.1 Process description...............................................................................21 2.2.2 Shock Wave Reactor configuration.....................................................21 2.3 Conventional steam cracking of ethane.......................................................24 3 Validation Shock Wave Reactor.........................................................................26 3.1 Shock Waver Reactor in Matlab and ASPEN .............................................26 3.1.1 Variation of the parameters..................................................................26 4 Modeling of the SWR and conventional furnace reactor in Aspen ..................28 4.1 Objective......................................................................................................28 4.2 Ethylene plant with a conventional furnace.................................................28 4.3 Ethylene plant with a SWR..........................................................................29 4.4 Configuration utilities used for separation ..................................................30 5 Energy consumption ...........................................................................................33 5.1 Energy consumption with a conventional furnace.......................................33 5.1.1 Variation of the furnace temperature...................................................34 5.2 Energy consumption with a SWR................................................................37 5.2.1 Variation of the SWR steam temperature............................................38 5.2.2 Variation of the residence time............................................................39 5.2.3 Variation of the SWR Mach speed ......................................................41 5.2.4 Variation of the SWR pressure before shock.......................................43 5.2.5 Variation of the SWR SDF ..................................................................45 5.2.6 Comparison energy consumption SWR and furnace...........................47 6 Environmental impact.........................................................................................50 6.1 Sound power calculation..............................................................................50 6.2 Enclosure of the SWR with a bunker ..........................................................52 6.3 Vibration control SWR................................................................................53 7 Conclusion and recommendations.....................................................................54 7.1 Embedding of the SWR...............................................................................54 7.2 Energy consumption....................................................................................54 7.3 Ethylene yield..............................................................................................54 7.4 Sound and vibration control.........................................................................55 7.5 Recommendations........................................................................................55 Appendix......................................................................................................................58 Appendix A Determination Nozzle and mixing configuration..................................59 Appendix B Shock property calculation.....................................................................62 Appendix C Determination pyrolysis section SWR....................................................63 6 Appendix D Input values used to determine accuracy of the Aspen SWR model ....68 Appendix E Output values used to determine accuracy of the Aspen SWR model..70 Appendix F Embedded SWR in an ethylene plant.....................................................72 Appendix G Embedded conventional furnace in an ethylene plant..........................73 Appendix H Experiment results .................................................................................75 7 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1-1 Demand/supply and Utilization balance of Ethylene [17] .........................11 Figure 1-2 Global Economics Growth forecast [17]....................................................12 Figure 1-3Ethylene production by feedstock’s [18] ....................................................13