Process description

Throughout from this process, the amount of conversion requires is 95% with selectivity of 78%.
These values are referred to the desired product which is acrylic acid. In production of acrylic
acid, there will be a combination among air feed, propylene and water. All of them are coming
separately from different streams. Air feed needs the equipment that useful to purge them to
mixer. The equipment is compressor(C-101) which will give enough potential energy to insert
into mixer. Inside mixture, all of three raw materials are combined together. After that, the outlet
stream of mixer will let the solution to flow into the reactor (R-101). This is for reaction process.
All of conversion and selectivity happened here until it may produce the desire product
according to the equations and specific calculation. Before it enters into the reactor the stream
need to be heated by using reactor feed heater (E-101).
The outlet stream of reactor will be in high temperature. This is because the reaction inside the
reactor usually requires heat energy for conversion process. So the endothermic reaction happen
here. That is how the stream 7 (outlet stream of reactor) need to be cooled down before being
inserted into the turbine. Usually, the function of turbine is to generate electricity from the vapor
that move inside it. In stream line 9 consists with all of the components in reaction which enter
into the absorption column (T-101). They are in vapor form. While a new feed of water
component species from stream 10 enters into absorption column from the top feed inlet. The
water will mix with the vapor which consists with vapor that consists with all elements to form a
liquid phase. The outlet stream will flow to incinerator as vapor phase while the outlet bottom
stream will flow at stream 12 as liquid phase. This liquid will flows to extraction column. It will
be cooled by using cooler (E-103).
Another feed species from stream 14 enter into extraction column (N-butyl acetate) as side
reactant. The function of extraction column is a unit operation that’s used to separate compounds
or metal complexes, based on their relative solubility in two different immiscible liquids, usually
water (polar) and an organic solvent (non-polar). There is a net transfer of one or more species
from one liquid into another liquid phase, generally from aqueous to organic. The solvent that is
enriched in solute(s) is called extract. The feed solution that is depleted in solute(s) is called the
raffinate. In this case, acetic acid and acrylic acid have low volatilities with respect to water.
Thus, N-butyl acetate is used as solvent since it is a typical solvent with low solubility in water
but high solubility in acrylic acid. The outlet stream mixture 16 consists with component water
and N-butyl acetate and it goes to waste water treatment. Meanwhile, the outlet stream 15
consists with all desire products then it flows to distillation column. The function of heater (E-
104) which locates between the stream 15 and 17 is used to increase the temperature from
56.520C until 1250C. The phase change is also happened from liquid into vapor phase.
The inlet stream for distillation column is stream 17. As we know, the stream 17 consists with
huge amount of water, Acrylic Acid, Acetic Acid and N-butyl Acetate. These components will
be separated according to their boiling point by distillation column respectively. Component that
has low boiling point is defined as lower key while component that has high boiling point is
defined as heavy key. In this process, the top product stream 18 consists with water (in vapor
phase) while the bottom product stream 19 (in liquid phase) consists with acrylic acid, water,
acetic acid and N-butyl Acetate. The boiling point of them are 100oC (water), 139oC (acrylic
acid), 118.1oC (acetic acid) and 126oC (N-butyl Acetate) respectively. So, we can define that the
light key (top product) is water and the rest are heavy key(bottom product). The top product of
distillation column will flow to the control room panel mount instrument. The bottom product
will flow to the solvent recovery column (T-104) for further operation.

The function of solvent recovery column (T-104) is similar to the distillation column. From here,
this column may operates at temperature of 138.990C. In fact the components that consist in the
stream 23 with liquid phase are water, acrylic acid, acetic acid and N-butyl Acetate. All of them
have different boiling point which are 100 oC (water), 139oC (acrylic acid), 118.1oC (acetic acid)
and 126oC (N-butyl Acetate). The components that will be defined as light key are water, N-
butyl Acetate and acetic acid. While, the heavy key that will be a desired product is Acrylic acid.
That is how in stream 27 (bottom stream of solvent recovery column) has the composition of
acrylic acid (154.98 kmol/hr) and the rest are acetic acid and N-butyl acetate which are 0.02
kmol/hr and 33.8 kmol/hr respectively. Meanwhile, at top stream product (24) consists with
acrylic acid (3.16 kmol/hr), acetic acid (12.82 kmol/hr) and N-butyl acetate (1337.74 kmol/hr).”
So, this follows the statement in the case study which say, N-butyl acetate is used as solvent
since it is typical solvent with low solubility in water than in acrylic acid. This acrylic acid
separates from large volume of water by solvent extraction.

Finally, outlet stream 27 will be input for last stage of this process which is distillation column.
Meanwhile, distillation column is a unit operation that is also categorized as separation process
unit. It uses the method for separating the various components of a liquid solution inlet which
depends upon the distribution of these components between a vapor phase and a liquid phase. All
components are present in both phases which depend on their boiling point of species and
operating condition of distillation column. The vapor phase is created from the liquid phase
mixture inlet by vaporization of component that has lower boiling point (light key) than the
component that has higher boiling point (heavy key) in liquid phase mixture inlet. Meanwhile,
the component that has higher value of boiling point among the other components inside the
liquid phase mixture inlet is called as heavy key. Then the composition of desire product have be
obtained which are 99.99 mole% acrylic acid that is produced as bottom product while 95 mole%
acetic acid is produced as the top product. Then the acrylic acid temperature is stored into a
storage S-102 which should be operated at temperature below 900C.
Detail description for each unit operations

No. Label Unit Operation

Components Process Condition X

1. C-101 Air compressor  Pressure : 1 Bar
Temperature : 250C
2. C-102 Turbine  Pressure : 3.39 Bar
Temperature : 1600C
3. C-103 Turbine  Pressure : 1.8 Bar
Temperature : 1390C
4. E-101 Reactor feed heater  Pressure : 5 Bar
Temperature : 102.120C
5. E-102 Reactor product cooler  Pressure : 3.39 Bar
Temperature : 3100C
6. E-103 Cooler  Pressure : 1.16 Bar
Temperature : 81.150C
7. E-104 Heater  Pressure : 1.2 Bar
Temperature : 56.520C
8. E-105 Cooler  Pressure : 0.14 Bar
Temperature : 56.430C
9. E-106 Cooler  Pressure : 1.8 Bar
Temperature : 146.460C
10. E-107 Cooler  Pressure : 0.97 Bar
Temperature : 124.480C
11. E-108 Cooler  Pressure : 0.97 Bar
Temperature : 126.720C
12. P-101 Pump  Pressure : 0.14 Bar
Temperature : 350C
13. P-102 Recycle pump  Pressure : 0.97 Bar
Temperature : 500C
14. P-103 Product pump  Pressure : 0.95 Bar
Temperature : 400C
15. R-101 Reactor  Pressure : 4.3 Bar
Temperature : 3100C
16. S-102 Acrylic acid storage  Pressure : 2.3 Bar
Temperature : 500C (should
below 900C)
17. T-101 Absorber column  Pressure : 2.04 Bar
Temperature : 166.470C

18.T-102 Extraction column  Pressure : 1.2 Bar

Temperature : 500C
19. T-103 Distillation column  Pressure : 1.02 Bar
Temperature : 1250C
20.T-104 Solvent recovery column  Pressure : 1.39 Bar
Temperature : 138.990C
21. T-105 Purification column  Pressure : 1.58 Bar
Temperature : 153.50C