(412b) A Novel Recuperative Configuration for Enhancement of Ethylene Oxide Production Via Integration of Ethylene Oxidation Process and Cyclohexane Dehydrogenation

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. This novel configuration enhances the efficiency of heat transfer because of short distance between the consumed and transferred heat. 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. Hydrogen is probably cleanest fuels that may be used in the future instead of fossil ones. At present, hydrogen is produced almost entirely from fossil fuels such as natural gas, naphtha, and coal. Dehydrogenation reactions are an attractive alternative for hydrogen production because it has essentially without CO2 emission. Furthermore, the world demand for EO is expected to rise because of its importance as an intermediate in producing antifreeze, polyester fibers, poly ethylene oxide, glycol ethers, ethanol amines, surfactants, lubricants, plasticizers and other petrochemical. In this article, a one-dimensional homogenous 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 ethylene oxide yield as a main product has been increased in the TCR and reaches 0.0866 in the outlet of novel reactor. Finally, the results illustrate that coupling of ethylene oxidation process and cyclohexane dehydrogenation in a thermally coupled reactor is sane and beneficial.