A transient process simulation on thermal explosion of propylene recovery reactor linked with calorimetric techniques

摘要

On 30 July, 2011 a serious explosion in a Taiwanese local plant associated with propylene recovery process shook the public's faith in chemical process safety. The recovery process was implemented to remove the H2S, COS, and also humidity reducing. It mainly proceeded by two adsorbents, BASF selexsorb CD and UOP SG series, respectively. However, gas phase propylene greatly alleviated the heat removal ability. Then, the adsorption heat triggered a chain reaction that finally caused the explosion and fire disaster. To prevent such the situation, we explored the characteristics between propylene and adsorbent comprehensively in this study. Vent sizing package 2 (VSP2), which can create pseudo-adiabatic conditions for acquiring precise process thermal parameters, was accompanied with the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), specific surface area and porosity analyzer. Complicated situations, such as heat transfer and fluid status related to disaster, were properly handled by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. A severe oligomerization reaction was revealed in our micro-scale experiments when the temperature exceeded 150 oC. On the other hand, through CFD transient simulations, the phenomena of heat accumulation in the middle of reactor can be demonstrated obviously. In summary, to understand the potential hazard of the propylene purification process, we used restore experiment and transient simulations, which had great effects. Based on these, methods and fault system analysis can correct this process and lessen the risk effectively.