Individual ChemCAD/ASPEN Assignment ChBE 431 Using ChemCAD and ASPEN, simulate the production of 25,000 metric tons/yr

(produced 24/7 335/yr) of 99 mole% of drying oil (C14H28) from the decomposition of acetylated castor oil (C15H31COOH): C15H31COOH ACO C14H28 + CH3COOH DO acetic acid (1)

The kinetics are described as follows: -rACO = (ko exp(-Ea/RT))*CACO rxn 1 Ei kcal/kmol 40,000 ko,i kmol/m3s 1 1013 (2)

Start your PFD with pure acetylated castor oil at 375C and 220kPa. You must use a kinetic reactor operating at 220 kPa and 375C with a pressure drop of 0.2 bar. The conversion of ACO in this reactor must be 85%. The reactor effluent should be cooled with one heat exchanger (the simplest one the simulator has) and then most likely sent to a flash (can be at any reasonable pressure or temp. Note: it is OK if the flash includes some DO and ACO in the overhead, but try to keep this to a minimum.) The bottoms stream from the flash should be sent to a separation unit(s) (can be any reasonable pressure) where DO will eventually be recovered. Try your best to purify and recycle the ACO back to the reactor. Try to achieve the highest purity of DO possible while not wasting ACO and/or contaminating the acetic acid stream. Label all units as 500 series. In a 5-10 single spaced page (not including tables, equations, and figures) report, write a process description for a PFD (see the example on page 113 of your textbook) based on one of your diagrams (you can choose to describe the ASPEN PFD or the ChemCAD PFD.) Provide an equipment summary table and a flow summary table for both (follow the examples provided on pages 942-945 of your textbook.) In the equipment summary table, be sure to explicitly mention important parameters such as reactor volume, distillation column length and diameter, number of trays, etc. Discuss and justify any decisions you had to make in preparing your PFD. I. Introduction: Discuss project goals Provide background information such as the reaction, the kinetics, etc. Discuss any constraints for the process.

II. PFD, Flow Stream Table, and Equipment Summary for both ASPEN and ChemCAD III. Discussion : Provide a process description for a PFD Discuss your choice of thermodynamic model Discuss why each design is the way it is. Explain why this is the most efficient, best design for the process under these constraints. Justify use of high temperature/pressure, large volumes, etc. if necessary. If the ASPEN and ChemCAD processes are different, explain why.

In addition, imagine we now built the plant according to your specifications. Discuss how the following scenarios would change the process, (assuming the sizes of the equipment have to remain the same): a. b. c. d. If the DO demand drops by 20% If water were an additional input to the system along with the ACO feed A new catalyst is used which changed the activation energy to 50,000 kcal/kmol The reactor is unable to maintain pressure and must run at 1 bar

(You do not have to simulate these scenarios with ChemCAD or ASPEN, simply hypothesize and describe how the process would change.) IV. Conclusions Summary of new information youve discovered by simulating this process with both packages.

How this will be graded: 15% - Reactor Design/Volume 35% - Design of separation units + recycle 15% - Justification of Design decisions 12% - Discussion of Scenarios 5% - Process Description 3% - Choice of model 15% - Readability, grammar, effective communication of ideas and concepts, organization, layout, appearance

To determine the size of a distillation column in ChemCAD 1. single click on tower in run simulation mode 2. under sizing, click vessel 3. lots of parameters 4. make sure vertical, click OK 5. new window, more parameters, just click OK 6. word pad with relevant data including length and L/D values will pop up.