The Ethane Story

An appreciation of statistical results can be gained from a study conducted to support the first application of computer control for an ethylene oxide production unit at Union Carbide Corporation in 1958. For the above purpose, twenty years of production experience with many units was correlated by excellent statisticians who had no regard for kinetics or chemistry. In spite of this, they did excellent, although entirely empirical work. One statement they made was ... [ethane has a significant effect on ethylene oxide production.] This was rejected by most technical people because it did not appear to make any sense ethane did not react, did not chemisorb, and went through the reactor unchanged. 

Much later (Marcinkowsky and Berty 1973) it was proven that ethane did indeed have an effect. In the study of the inhibitor action of chlorinated hydrocarbons it was discovered that these compounds chlorinate the silver catalyst and ethane removes the chlorine from the catalyst by forming ethyl chloride. Since the inhibitor was in the 10 ppm range and similar quantities were used from the ethane present in about one volume percent, the small difference could not be calculated from material balance. The effect of ethane was only noticed as significant by the statistics, which justifies the statement made by Aris (1966) that, The need for sophistications should not be rejected unsophisticatedly.  

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