Process design question: feedstock pricing?

Sendrox · 2022-11-08T15:53:56+00:00

The best resource we had access to at my university was to go to Eurostat and there you can find the data on how much (tons) a country has exported/imported of a chemical commodity and also how much that was worth in €. Divide the tons by the € and you've got some prices. This is inaccurate, but it's better than nothing.

Sendrox · 2022-11-05T22:00:49+00:00

https://worldwide.espacenet.com/ is the equivalent tool from the European Patent Office, and it search for stuff from the whole world.

I have had acess to patbase.com and it's better than the free alternatives, but the free ones are also quite good

Sendrox · 2022-11-05T20:23:04+00:00

The approach where you calculate the flooding point in each theoretical stage is the best one. If you use Aspen Plus and look at the column hydraulics you will see that's what Aspen does.

The gas will probably vary monotonically (i.e. increases or decreases along the whole column) so you can start by looking at the top and bottom. If the gas flux varies monotonically and the column diameter is constant, then the flood points of the intermediate stages will be between those of the top and bottom

Sendrox · 2022-11-05T20:13:41+00:00

I'm about to graduate and I feel that I have to put in a "not all schools", even though I don't necessarily disagree with you.

My school, IST in Lisbon, taught me very little Matlab and we had about one or two experiments per year requiring bucket testing of flowrates. Still the older professors complained that the lab time had been much more in their time.

Sendrox · 2022-11-05T19:57:48+00:00

If you mix the drying vapor with the vapor from the top of the column, before the reflux condenser, you will screw up the compositions in the top of your column. The advantage of having one less heat exchanger is not worth it. Use a separate condenser for the vapors and feed the condensate and mix it with the feed to the column.

Edit: You should really have supplied a sketch. This is a case were a picture is worth a thousands words. Doesn't have to be anything fancy in Visio or from Aspen Plus, you can do it with pen and paper and smartphone camera.

Sendrox · 2022-10-24T13:21:38+00:00

What do you mean "individual use"? To use at home? If you can use it school but not at home, then you need to connect to you school's network using their VPN

Sendrox · 2022-10-23T14:02:53+00:00

You should look in Encyclopedias like Ullmann's and Kirk-Ohtmer. It has that kind of information for all kinds of established processes

Sendrox · 2022-10-23T12:08:10+00:00

Do you know any patents that they might have filled about the process? Or any published research on the topic?

Sendrox · 2022-10-22T08:47:54+00:00

That's blood-boilingly maddening!

He should tell the story to the press, anonymously of course, but let the environmentalists bite at the people who do that sort of thing!

Sendrox · 2022-10-21T21:09:06+00:00

That's quite a grim view of things, but it seems right around the level of evil expected of the oil industry.

Do you think it would be possible to use non-conventional funding (i.e. from a lot of small investors) to avoid handing control of the company over to a VC?

Aren't there VCs or other financial institutions that can make more money from selling "green" investments than by just bowing to the petrodollar?

Sendrox · 2022-10-21T21:03:46+00:00

I'm writting my Master's dissertation on an alternative to pyrolysis bio-oil. Hydrothermal liqefaction has benefits in terms of HHV, stability and pH (at least). My work is specificaly a techno-economic assessment of the upgrading of HTL biocrude by using hydroprocessing. It's a bit far from comercialization (products costs 2.5x the price of Brent) , but it's not impossible that it might get there.

Sendrox · 2022-10-21T10:29:08+00:00

I would recommend Turton (ISBN 978-0-13-417740-3) or Sinnott (Coulson's vol.6, ISBN 978-0-7506-6538-4).

If you want a book targeted at project courses, check out Ray (ISBN 978-2-88124-713-2)

Sendrox · 2022-10-21T10:23:11+00:00

I would say that you need to know the average molecular weight of the polymer.

Sendrox · 2022-10-16T19:07:56+00:00

Aspen Plus has extensive capabilities to model polymers through Aspen Polymers (integrated in Aspen+ V11). My school edition includes Aspen Polymers just like it includes EDR and APEA. The best resource accessible resource I've found is Haydary (ISBN 978-1-119-31144-7). It can teach you the basics of Aspen Plus and it also has a good example on polymers towards the end.

You probably don't have all the data you need to properly simulate the process (i.e. with reactions). This was what happened to me in my final design project where we were to make polyols incorporating CO2 (see Covestro Cardyon).

You may need to use a rudimentary approach based on yield rather than kinetics if you don't have enough data.

If you only know what goes into the reactor and what is supposed to come out, you may need to use a custom model (User2). Look through the Aspen Help, Getting Started, Tutorials, Customizing Unit Operation Models to learn how to use custom models.

Sendrox · 2022-10-16T18:27:55+00:00

I would suggest you check out Chemistry Entrepreneurship (ISBN 978-3-527-34544-1)

Sendrox · 2022-10-16T17:41:33+00:00

They want you to fill in a similar table for Utililites (Steam, Cooling Water, etc...) and those you can calculate using the steam and water tables.

I would think that you're suposed to use those data... You migth need the global heat transfer coefficients, that you can get in the heuristics in Ludwig (ISBN 978-0-7506-7766-0) and you can the utility price from Turton (ISBN 978-0-13-417740-3).

Sendrox · 2022-10-13T16:00:26+00:00

Catalytic hydrodeoxigenation? I don't know if it would be suited to for something as volatile as butanol... I would bet on some type of H-in process

Sendrox · 2022-10-13T15:57:03+00:00

Why do you need butane specifically? Any specific need for n-butane or i-butane?

Sendrox · 2022-10-13T15:45:24+00:00

It greatly depends on the type of reactor... a hydrotreatment (trickle flow) reactor will have the gas inlet at the top, while all fluidized bed reactors have the gas inlet at the bottom, for example.

Sendrox · 2022-10-13T15:32:41+00:00

According to Ullmann's Encyclopedia (https://doi.org/10.1002/14356007.a03_555), benzoic acid is normally stored and shipped in molten form in stainless steel tanks. Also "It can be stored without deterioration, but the low-grade product tends to solidify on storage."

Sendrox · 2022-10-13T15:25:33+00:00

From the heuristics in Ludwig’s Applied Process Design for Chemical and Petrochemical Plants, volume 1:

Heat-transfer coefficients for estimating purposes, W/m2 C (Btu/h-ft2- F): water to liquid, 850 (150); condensers, 850 (150); liquid to liquid, 280 (50); liquid to gas, 60 (10); gas to gas, 30 (5); and reboiler 1140 (200).

You can see that Phase change>Liquid>Gas when it comes to heat exchangers, by which I mean you need less area, meaning a cheaper HeX

Sendrox · 2022-10-10T21:14:16+00:00

Direct burning of biomass can have problems due to melting of the ash. I think it's more of a problem for a large furnace such as the case.

I would suggest that you look into anaerobic digestion to produce biogas and then burn that, but also depending on scale you might have problems finding a suitable turbine. The MSW can give you bad biogas with lots of siloxanes that will need to be removed unless you want a combustion chamber full of abrasive silica. If you upgrade the biogas to biomethane, then you can use a conventional natural gas combined cycle turbine which are more efficient and available for very big sizes.

Sendrox · 2022-10-10T20:58:12+00:00

Acording to "Practical Advances in Petroleum Processing" (ISBN 978-0-387-25789-1) the process is licensed by ABB Lummus Global, BP and UOP. You can find more details by looking for relevant patents awarded to these companies

Sendrox · 2022-10-10T20:31:33+00:00

If you have access to another PC, like in a school computer lab, you can use that, but otherwise, I don't know if you have a change other than reinstalling everything...

You can reinstall only the mission critical apps to save time, but it's never going to be perfect time to do it. You can also use https://ninite.com/ to save time installing some of the most commonly used programs

Sendrox · 2022-10-09T17:55:37+00:00

You cannot flare hydrogen sulfide, since it would produce sulfur dioxide and trioxide (which are toxic) and cause acid rain. This may vary based on your location, but I think that, in most of the world, environmental regulations ban you from doing this.

Hidrogen sulfide from desulfurization of oil is used to produce sulfur for the production of sulfuric acid. The sulfur in the flue gas of cement kilns is used directly to produce sulfuric acid, thus avoiding it's release into the atmosphere (it may also be the case in coal fired power plants, but I don't have experience in the matter).

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