DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF ETHYLENE CARBONATE PRODUCTION PROCESS FROM BIOMASS

Abstract

This research studied the design and development of ethylene carbonate production process from biomass. The overall process consisted of four sections including biogas production and treatment; oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) process; ethylene oxide (EO) process and ethylene carbonate (EC) process. Biogas was produced by a novel anaerobic digestion process and then treated to remove carbon dioxide. OCM reaction on Na-W-Mn/SiO2 catalyst was employed to produce ethane and ethylene (C2) products. Ethylene was then converted to ethylene oxide and ethylene carbonate by utilizing carbon dioxide generated from other parts of the process. Process simulation was performed by Aspen Plus® program. Novel kinetic model of OCM and EO had been employed in the developed process. Four key parameters of the process i.e. oxygen feed flow rate for OCM process, OCM reaction temperature, oxygen feed flow rate for EO process and EO reaction temperature were studied. The optimized process converts 99.98% of methane in biogas and yields 27.47% of ethylene, which consecutively converts into ethylene carbonate by utilizing 27.54% of carbon dioxide generated from the process. Process heat integration was performed in the optimized model. The heat-integrated process required 465 kW of energy consumption, which is about 70% reduction from the base case model. This process provides a green chemical concept, which uses biomass as raw materials and utilizes carbon dioxide generated to produce a higher valuable chemical.