A novel recuperative configuration for enhancement of ethylene oxide production via integration of ethylene oxidation process and cyclohexane dehydrogenation

摘要

In this article, the process intensification (PI) concept was studied for simultaneous hydrogen and ethylene oxide production. The most important advantages of Process intensification are reduction of equipment size and environmental impact, increase of energy utilization, and so it has attracted great attention. One example of process intensification is a novel reactor concept that facilitates direct coupling of exothermic and endothermic reactions. In this work, endothermic dehydrogenation of cyclohexane is supposed to occur in the shell side of conventional ethylene oxide synthesis reactor. This coupling has more importance in the others, for the reason that, hydrogen has been produced in endothermic side and also, ethylene oxide in exothermic side. A one-dimensional heterogeneous model was used for steady state simulation of thermally coupled reactor (TCR). The simulation results are compared with the outputs of conventional ethylene oxide reactor (CR). The results demonstrate the performance of thermally coupled reactor is beneficial. However, the performance of the new configuration needs to be tested experimentally over a range of parameters under practical operating conditions.