(67c) University of Houston: Design of a Propylene Glycol Plant

Propylene is the second most common petrochemical feedstock in the chemical processing industry. It is the building block for a variety of products, such as polypropylene, propylene oxide, and propylene glycol. The propylene glycol market is currently growing at eight percent per annum and exceeds two million tons per year.  The production capacity of propylene glycol in the world reached 1.6 million metric tons (3.5 billion pounds) in 2010. Among the many manufacturers are Dow, Lyondell, Sinopec, Shell, BASF, Repsol, Huntsman, and others. Dow Chemical has approximately half of the world production. The goal of this project is to design a plant that will produce 90,000 metric tons/yr of propylene glycol: 79,200 metric tons/yr will be propylene glycol (MPG) and 10,800 metric tons/yr will be dipropylene glycol (DPG). This presentation includes the design of the plant and the process economics of the plant.