(434e) Troubleshooting Start-up of a Newly Built Intensified Heat Exchanger Reactor - Using Reaction Engineering and Dynamic Modeling to Solve Real-Life Problems
AIChE Annual Meeting
2016
2016 AIChE Annual Meeting
Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division
Reaction Chemistry and Engineering II
Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - 4:43pm to 5:05pm
A new team was formed to analyze the problems and deliver a final solution and investment scenario. In a day-long meeting under significant (time) pressure, available (transient) plant data were collected, as well as reaction kinetics relations obtained from earlier pilot-plant experiments. These data were used to construct a chemical engineering, dynamic model of the loop reactor. This model was used to analyze the problem and run through various scenarios that could explain the anomalous reactor behaviour. After running about a dozen scenarios, the apparent rate of reaction after scale-up appeared to be only 1/4 of the rate obtained from the pilot plant runs, while the heat exchanger appeared to deliver only 1/2 of the expected heat duty. The model predicted that plant start-up should be possible, but at only 1/3 of the design capacity. This was demonstrated in a successful trial run a few weeks later, in which the reactor produced on-spec product for the first time. To reach full design capacity, a change in hardware was still required. After 6 months the project closed, with the reactor up and running at full capacity.
The presentation shows the hardware changes implemented, the problem solving and modeling procedures used, and compares the modeled temperature and plant temperature profiles. A plausible explanation for the strange differences in apparent reaction kinetics before and after scale-up is proposed. Finally, the presentation demonstrates that scale-up can present really nasty surprises in actual practice, but also shows how a Chemical Engineering modeling approach can be used to solve issues and find minimum investment solutions, even after an installation is built.