Tennessee Eastman Plant

Figure 5.5 The Tennessee Eastman plant (Downs and Vogel 1993), with the reaetor-separator process core highlighted.

Banerjee, A. and Arkun, Y. (1995). Control configuration design applied to the Tennessee Eastman plant-wide control problem. Comput. Chem. Eng., 19, 453-480. 

A new methodology designed to optimize both the planning of preventive maintenance and the amount of resources needed to perform maintenance in a process plant is presented. The methodology is based on the use of a Montecarlo simulation to evaluate the expected cost of maintenance as well as the expected economic loss, an economical indicator for maintenance performance. The Montecarlo simulation describes different failure modes of equipment and uses the prioritization of maintenance supplied, the availability of labour and spare parts. A Genetic algorithm is used for optimisation. The well-known Tennessee Eastman Plant problem is used to illustrate the results. 

The high cost of coal handling and preparation and treatment of effluents, compounded by continuing low prices for cmde oil and natural gas, has precluded significant exploitation of coal as a feedstock for methanol. A small amount of methanol is made from coal in South Africa for local strategic reasons. Tennessee Eastman operates a 195,000-t/yr methanol plant in Tennessee based on the Texaco coal gasification process to make the methyl acetate intermediate for acetic anhydride production (15). 

The most successful example of generating chemicals directly from coal is the Tennessee Eastman integrated process for producing acetic anhydride. The commercial plant gasifies approximately 900 tons of coal per day and performs four chemical steps to yield annually 500 million pounds of acetic anhydride, 390 million pounds of methyl acetate, and 365 million pounds of methanol. In addition, 150 million pounds per year of acetic acid may be produced from acetic anhydride. 

Steam Line Rupture at Tennessee Eastman Division, Peter N. Lodal Lessons Learned from the Longford Royal Commission Investigation into the Explosion and Fire on 25 September 1998 at the Esso Gas Processing Plant, Mark Boult Gary Kenney, Robin Pitblado... 

Today acetic acid is produced mainly from methanol and carbon monoxide. This process, along with the Tennessee Eastman acetic anhydride plant using syn gas, are the current standards in the industry when considering new expansion regardless of the price of ethylene. The vinyl acetate process described here may achieve this stature if its commercial development is permitted to occur. 

Chem.Br., 1983, 19, 896 here it is reported that Tennessee Eastman is commissioning a plant for the production of acetic anhydride from coal which uses a Texaco entrained-bed gasifier to produce syngas. 

The publication of an actual industrial plant-wide control problem, the Tennessee Eastman challenge process (Downs and Vogel 1993) generated several... 

Larsson, T., Hestetun, K., Hovland, E., and Skogestad, S. (2001). Self-optimizing control of a large-scale plant the Tennessee Eastman process. Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 40(22), 4889M901. 

As a group, many other researchers were working on new processes for prepg RDX both in the USA (Refs 24, 27,28,30,32,34,36,37, 38, 42 601 and in Canada (Refs 78,86.87,88,89,90,92 and others). The Bachmann process was applied industrially during WWII at one plant in Canada and later in the US by the Tennessee-Eastman Co (Holston Ordnance Works, Kingsport, Term). It not only made the manuf of RDX more economical... 

Banerjee, A., and Arkun, Y. Control Configuration Design Applied to the Tennessee Eastman Plantwide Control Problem, Comput. Chen. Eng., 19, 453 -480 < 1995), Downs, J. J.. and Vogel, E. F. A Plant-Wide Industrial Process Control Problem," Comput. Chem. Eng.. 17, 245-255 (1993). 

Thermodynamically, the carbonylation of methyl acetate (AG298 -10 kJ/mol) is considerably less favourable than that of methanol (AG298 -74 kJ/mol). This means that the reaction does not reach completion but attains an equilibrium which is dependent on the temperature and the CO pressure. Two variants are currently practised commercially that developed by Tennessee Eastman, based on a Halcon process, and a BP process in which acetic acid and the anhydride are co-produced in proportions which can be varied according to demand. Syngas for the Eastman process is made from coal which is mined close to the plant in Tennessee and the acetic anhydride produced is used to make cellulose acetate for film production. The BP process uses syngas generated from North Sea gas which is piped directly to the BP plant in EIull. [Acetic anhydride manufacture M. J. Eloward, M. D. Jones, M. S. Roberts, S. A. Taylor, Catalysis Today, 1993, 18, 325]. 

The new framework for maintenance analysis and optimization is demonstrated using the well-known Tennessee Eastman (TE) plant. The description and the process flowsheet for the TE process can be formd in the literature, e.g. in Ricker and Lee (1995). The list of equipments in the process is given in table 2. 

The only coal-to-hydrogen plant in the United States is the Tennessee Eastman Chemical Facility. However, the U.S. oils refining industry has... 

The Army had contracted with Tennessee Eastman, a manufacturing subsidiary of Eastman Kodak, to operate the electromagnetic separation plant. By late October 1943, when Stone Webster finished installing the first Alpha racetrack, the company had assembled a work force of 4,800 men and women. They were trained to rim and maintain the calutrons— without knowing why— twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. 

The Tennessee Eastman test-bed problem (Downs Vogel, 1993) involves the control of five unit operations. The simulated plant has 41 process variables and 12 manipulated variables as illustrated in Figure 2, which are nnodeled with 50 state variables. Out of 41 process variables there are 22 controllable outputs including level, pressure, temperature, flow and 19 composition indicators. The chemical reactions are irreversible and occur in the vapor space of the reactor. The formation of an inert byproduct, F, is undesirable. The products G and H accumulate in the reactor. In this paper the desired set point is 50% G and 50% H on a mass basis. By-product F may be present in the product with 97.5% of the product being composed of G and H. 

In order to demonstrate the APOS approach, we present some results for the well-known Tennessee Eastman process of Downs and Vogel [60]. The process has two main reactions leading to the formation of the products G and H, and side reactions that lead to a less desirable byproduct F. As per the operational requirements given in the problem statement, the plant operates over a broad range of the G to H ratio of production rates. 

A number of plant-scale control studies have been published. Luyben (2002) has presented a series of case studies using dynamic simulation. Downs and Vogel (1993) documented a Tennessee Eastman Company challenge problem that has received considerable subsequent attention from control researchers. Larsson and Skogestad (2000) cite many efforts to deal with the... 

In 1980, the Tennessee Eastman unit of Eastman Kodak announced that it would begin construction of a plant to make acetic anhydride from coal. This decision reflected a changing of the raw materials base of much of the chemical industry due to such factors as the rising cost of natural gas and petroleum and the large coal reserves of the United States. 

In 1983 Eastman Chemical Company (Division of Eastman Kodak Company) became the first U.S. manufacturer to produce a modern generation of industrial chemicals, with acetic anhydride as the key product, using coal as the feedstock. " This production was made possible by successful completion of facilities at Tennessee Eastman Division, in Kingsport, Tennessee. The start-up of this chemical plant was the result of more than a decade of work done to identify, develop, and assemble the numerous technologies needed for a viable commercial venture. 

A chemistry based on the conversion of synthesis gas has been developed and appHed extensively in South Africa to the production of Hquid fuels and many other products. A small-scale production is used in the manufacture of photographic film materials from coal-derived synthesis gas in the Eastman Kodak plant in Kingsport, Tennessee. However, the principal production of chemicals from coal involves the by-products of coke manufacturing. 

The Texaco gasifier and a similar unit developed by The Dow Chemical Company are pressurized entrained gasifiers. At the top pulverized coal is mixed with reaction gas and is blown down into the gasifier. The reaction products leave from the side, and ash is blown down to a water pool where it is quenched. These units have operated at an Eastman Kodak facUity in Kingsport, Tennessee and at the Coolwater power station in California for an integrated combined cycle power plant. 

Eastman Chemical Company has operated a coal-to-methanol plant in Kingsport, Tennessee, since 1983. Two Texaco gasifiers (one is a backup) process 34 Mg/h (37 US ton/h) of coal to synthesis gas. The synthesis gas is converted to methanol by use of ICl methanol technology. Methanol is an intermediate for producing methyl acetate and acetic acid. The plant produces about 225 Gg/a (250,000 US ton/a) of acetic anhydride. As part of the DOE Clean Coal Technology Program, Air Products and Cnemicals, Inc., and Eastman Chemic Company are constructing a 9.8-Mg/h (260-US ton/d) slurry-phase reactor for the conversion of synthesis gas to methanol and dimethyl... 

Higher crude oil prices had revived studies in the use of coal as a chemical feedstock. But while the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis was still used in South Africa by Sasol, the only other industrial gasification unit was the one Eastman Kodak brought on stream in Kingsport, Tennessee, in 1983, to produce coalbased acetic anhydride. The coal came from the Appalachian mountains and was cheap enough relative to oil prices at the time to warrant such an installation, and the plant is now to be expanded. 

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