Modeling aromatics production from mixtures of butanes and butenes with chemical equilibria

Abstract

Aromatics production from C4 hydrocarbons is an interesting way to increase economic values and mixed C4 usage alternatives. This study was to model aromatics production from mixtures of butanes and butenes, enabling industrial work to be more developed and actualized by reducing laboratory cost and experimental time. The model was regarded as an equilibrium state in which the forward reaction rate and the reverse reaction rate are equivalent. The catalysts would be Zn loaded on ZSM-5/ZSM-11 under 480 ⁰C and 0.4 MPa and MoC loaded on HZSM-5 under 500 ⁰C and 1 atm. The reactions in the models were from the Aspen Plus V9 simulation and non-linear program solver. The reactions included main reactions and side reactions, which the catalysts performed to select and unselect certain reactions. Moreover, the reactions were grouped by splitting reactors, and connected in series to classify a procedure. It has been found that butanes and butenes would be converted to ethylcyclohexane before ethylbenzene. Then, it produced BTX which was formed by hydrocracking, isomerization, and catalytic cracking for Zn loaded on ZSM-5/ZSM-11 catalyst while ethylcyclohexane was cracked by hydrogen to be methylcyclohexane and cyclohexane before aromatization and hydrocracking respectively over MoC loaded on HZSM-5 catalyst.