Bottom production

Figure 3.8a shows the temperature-composition diagram for a minimum-boiling azeotrope that is sensitive to changes in pressure. This azeotrope can be separated using two columns operating at different pressures, as shown in Fig. 3.86. Feed with mole fraction of A Ufa)) of, say, 0.3 is fed to the high-pressure column. The bottom product from this high-pressure column is relatively pure B, whereas the overhead is an azeotrope with jcda = 0-8, jcdb = 0.2. This azeotrope is fed to the low-pressure column, which produces relatively pure A in the bottom and in the overhead an azeotrope with jcda = 0.6, jcdb = 0.4. This azeotrope is added to the feed of the high-pressure column.

If there is a three-component mixture and simple columns are employed, then the decision is between two sequences, as illustrated in Fig. 5.1. The sequence shown in Fig. 5.1a is called the direct sequence, in which the lightest component is taken overhead in each column. The indirect sequence, shown in Fig. 5.16, takes the heaviest component as the bottom product in each column. There may be... 

Heuristic 4 Favor near-equimolar splits between top and bottom products in individual columns. 

It is interesting to note that this is the sequence that would have been obtained had only heuristic 4 been used (favor near-equimolar splits between top and bottom products) throughout. 

PX—toluene splitter where high purity PX is taken as a bottoms product. Eight plants have been built worldwide. 

Ethylene Stripping. The acetylene absorber bottom product is routed to the ethylene stripper, which operates at low pressure. In the bottom part of this tower the loaded solvent is stripped by heat input according to the purity specifications of the acetylene product. A lean DMF fraction is routed to the top of the upper part for selective absorption of acetylene. This feature reduces the acetylene content in the recycle gas to its minimum (typically 1%). The overhead gas fraction is recycled to the cracked gas compression of the olefin plant for the recovery of the ethylene. 

Dry inlet gas that has been dehydrated by molecular sieves (qv) or alumina beds to less than 0.1 ppm water is spHt into two streams by a three-way control valve. Approximately 60% of the inlet gas is cooled by heat exchange with the low pressure residue gas from the demethanizer and by external refrigeration. The remainder of the inlet gas is cooled by heat exchange with the demethanized bottoms product, the reboiler, and the side heater. A significant amount of low level refrigera tion from the demethanizer Hquids and the cold residue gas stream is recovered in the inlet gas stream. 

Essentially all of the methane [74-82-8] is removed ia the demethanizer overhead gas product. High recovery of ethane and heavier components as demethanizer bottoms products is commonplace. The work that is generated by expanding the gas ia the turboexpander is utilized to compress the residue gas from the demethanizer after it is warmed by heat exchange with the inlet gas. Recompression and deUvery to a natural gas pipeline is performed downstream of the plant. A propane recovery of 99% can be expected when ethane recoveries are ia excess of 65%. 

The bottoms, consisting of absorption oil, absorbed propane, and higher boiling hydrocarbons, are fed to the lean-oil fractionator. The LPG and the natural gas Hquids are removed as the overhead product from the absorption oil which is removed as a ketde-bottom product. 

The overhead product from the lean-oil fractionator, consisting of propane and heavier hydrocarbons, enters the depropanizer. The depropanizer overhead product is treated to remove sulfur and water to provide specification propane. The depropanizer bottoms, containing butane and higher boiling hydrocarbons, enters the debutanizer. Natural gasoHne is produced as a bottom product from the debutanizer. The debutanizer overhead product is mixed butanes, which are treated for removal of sulfur and water, then fed iato the butane spHtter. Isobutane is produced as an overhead product from the spHtter and / -butane is produced as a bottoms product. 

The separation of the isomers is carried out by a combination of fractional distillation and crystallization. In a fractional vacuum distillation step, the distillate, obtained at a head temperature of 96—97°C at 1.6 kPa (12 mm Hg), is fairly pure o-nitrotoluene and can be purified further by crystallization. The meta isomer is distilled from a mixture of m- and -nitrotoluene and can be purified further by additional distillation and crystallization steps. The bottoms product from the distillation steps is cooled in a crystallizer to obtain nitrotoluene. 

As a result the undistiUed bottoms product is often used commercially. If further purification is necessary, these products can be vacuum distilled. 

This ammonia is recycled to the reactor via a compressor and a heater. Liquid ammonia is used as reflux on the top of the absorber. The net amount of carbon dioxide formed in the reactor is removed as bottom product from the absorber in the form of a weak ammonium carbamate solution, which is concentrated in a desorber-washing column system. The bottom product of this washing column is a concentrated ammonium carbamate solution which is reprocessed in a urea plant. The top product, pure ammonia, is Hquefted and used as reflux together with Hquid makeup ammonia. The desorber bottom product, practically pure water, is used in the quench system in addition to the recycled mother Hquor. 

Hquid—Hquid-phase spHt the compositions of these two feed streams He oa either side of the azeotrope. Therefore, column 1 produces pure A as a bottoms product and the azeotrope as distillate, whereas column 2 produces pure B as a bottoms product and the azeotrope as distillate. The two distillate streams are fed to the decanter along with the process feed to give an overall decanter composition partway between the azeotropic composition and the process feed composition according to the lever rule. This arrangement is weU suited to purifying water—hydrocarbon mixtures, such as a C —C q hydrocarbon, benzene, toluene, xylene, etc water—alcohol mixtures, such as butanol, pentanol, etc as weU as other immiscible systems. 

The propylene fractionator operates at a pressure of 1.8 to 2.0 MPa with more than 160 trays required for a high purity propylene product. Often a two-tower design is employed when polymer grade (99.5%+) is required. A pasteurization section may also be used when high purity is required. The bottoms product contains mainly propane that can be recycled to the cracking heaters or used as fuel. Typical tower dimensions and internals for a 450,000 t/yr ethylene plant with naphtha feed are summarized in Table 7. 

If the produc ts from a column are especially pure, even this configuration may produce excessive interaction between the composition loops. Then the composition of the less pure product should oe con-troUed by manipulating its own flow the composition of the remaining product should be controlled by manipulating reflux ratio if it is the distillate or boilup ratio if it is the bottom product. 

Liquid reaching the bottom of the column is partially vaporized in a heated r eboiler to provide boil-up, which is sent back up the column. The remainder of the bottom liquid is withdrawn as bottoms, or bottom product. Vapor reaching the top of the column is cooled and condensed to liquid in the over head conden.ser. Part of this liquid is returned to the column as r eflux to provide liquid overflow. The remainder of the overhead stream is withdrawn as distillate, or overhead product . In some cases only part of the vapor is condensed so that a vapor distillate can be withdrawn. 

An azeotrope limits the separation that can be obtained between components by simple distillation. For the system described by cui ve B, the maximum overhead-product concentration that could be obtained from a feed with X = 0.25 is the azeotropic composition. Similarly, a feed with X = 0.9 could produce a bottom-product composition no lower than the azeotrope. 

Answers are desired to the following two questions. First, what bottom-product composition Xb will the column produce under these specifications Second, what will be the top vapor rate Vv in this operation, and will it exceed the maximum vapor-rate capacity for this column, which is assumed to be 0.252 (kg mol)/s [2000 (lb mol)/h] at the top-tray conditions ... 

The (x, i )), values in Eq. (13-37) are minimum-reflux values, i.e., the overhead concentration that would be produced by the column operating at the minimum reflux with an infinite number of stages. When the light key and the heavy key are adjacent in relative volatihty and the specified spht between them is sharp or the relative volatilities of the other components are not close to those of the two keys, only the two keys will distribute at minimum reflux and the Xi D),n values are easily determined. This is often the case and is the only one considered here. Other cases in which some or all of the nonkey components distribute between distillate and bottom products are discussed in detail by Henley and Seader (op. cit.). 

The original column normally has less than 7 mol percent i-Cs in the overhead and less than 3 mole percent n-C4 in the bottoms product when operating at a distillate rate of D/F = 0.489. Can these product purities he produced on the smaller column at D/F = 0.489 ... 

In the inner-loop calculation sequence, component flow rates are computed from the MESH equations by the tridiagonal matrix method. The resulting bottoms-product flow rate deviates somewhat from the specified value of 50 lb mol/h. However, by modifying the component stripping factors with a base stripping factor, S, in (13-109) of 1,1863, the error in the bottoms flow rate is reduced to 0,73 percent. 

From these tables, it is seen that the stage temperatures and total liquid flows are already close to the converged solution after only one outer-loop iteration. However, the composition of the bottoms product, specifically with respect to the lightest component, C, is not close to the converged solution until after two iterations. The inside-out method does not always converge so dramatically, but is usually quite efficient,... 

The rate-based model gave a distillate with 0.023 mol % ethylbenzene and 0.0003 mol % styrene, and a bottoms product with essentially no methanol and 0.008 mol % toluene. Miirphree tray efficiencies for toluene, styrene, and ethylbenzene varied somewhat from tray to tray, but were confined mainly between 86 and 93 percent. Methanol tray efficiencies varied widely, mainly from 19 to 105 percent, with high values in the rectifying section and low values in the stripping section. Temperature differences between vapor and liquid phases leaving a tray were not larger than 5 F. 

Based on an average tray efficiency of 90 percent for the hydrocarbons, the eqiiilibniim-based model calculations were made with 36 equilibrium stages. The results for the distillate and bottoms compositions, which were very close to those computed by the rate-based method, were a distillate with 0.018 mol % ethylbenzene and less than 0.0006 mol % styrene, and a bottoms product with only a trace of methanol and 0.006 mol % toluene. 

One of the components, A (not necessarily the most volatile species of the original mixture), is withdrawn as an essentially pure distillate stream. Because the solvent is nonvolatile, at most a few stages above the solvent-feed stage are sufficient to rectify the solvent from the distillate. The bottoms product, consisting of B and the solvent, is sent to the recoveiy column. The distillate from the recoveiy column is pure B, and the solvent-bottoms product is recycled back to the extractive column. 

For a binary, let s denote as V the fractional molar split of the feed into overhead product and as L the fractional split into bottom product. Calculate compositions of the flash separation of feed into vapor v and liquid 1 to give v/1 = V/L. The resulting vapor can be regarded as being composed of a portion d of the overhead product composition and a portion r of the flash liquid composition. 

Our example system has a flow-controlled feed, and the reboiler heat is controlled by cascade from a stripping section tray temperature. Steam is the heating medium, with the condensate pumped to condensate recovery. Bottom product is pumped to storage on column level control overhead pressure is controlled by varying level in the overhead condenser the balancing line assures sufficient receiver pressure at all times overhead product is pumped to storage on receiver level control and reflux is on flow control. 

Liquid level above seal pan in bottom of column. Poor stripping of bottoms product. High pressure drop across section. Board mounted instrument improperly calibrated. Level gauge in field not properly blown down or even checked. Operation problem. 

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