Summary: Sec-Butanol Alcohol

706 Words3 Pages

Butanol can be considered as an important industrial chemical which is useful as a fuel additive, feedstock chemical in the plastic industry and food grade extractant in the food and flavor industry. Every year, 10 to 12 billion pounds of butanol are produced by petrochemical implies and the requirement for this commodity will probably increase (Bramucci, et al., 2013). Sec-butanol alcohol (SBA) is an intermediate product in order to produce methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) which is a solvent for cleaning agents and paint removers. Since SBA is an isomer of butanol it is anticipated to have similar fuel properties. Besides, volatile esters of SBA are used in perfumes and artificial flavors. It is a chiral compound, and hence it exists as two enantiomers …show more content…

The catalyst used in this reaction is a copper based catalyst with the production of hydrogen as the by-product. In most of the production plant, the production involves two reaction steps. Firstly, it will start with n-butene whereby n-butene will be hydrated to produce sec-butanol. Then, the hydrated n-butene (SBA) will undergo dehydrogenation reaction to produce MEK. This production route dominates the MEK production industry in which 90% of the world production plant has chosen this route (Schulze and Homann, 1989) and it is the second largest method of utilizing n-butene produced by refinery of butane and butene in oil and gas industry (Kent, 2007). Due to the rapid development of the oil and gas industry, these production routes is considered to be comparatively …show more content…

There are various simulation programs used in industry depending on the field, application and desired simulation products such as for entire process unit or one piece of equipment. Aspen can be a very powerful tool when used to its full capabilities for a Chemical Engineer in a different of fields including oil and gas production, refining, chemical processing, environmental studies and power generation (Bernards and Overney, 2004). The advantages of modelling using by Aspen plus are it can reduce plant design as well as allows designer to quickly test various plant configurations. Besides, it also helps in improve current process as determines optimal process conditions within given constraints and assists in locating the constraining parts of a process that will be carried out using model analysis tools such as sensitvity analysis and optimization tool. Furthermore, the use of a process flowsheet simulator is beneficial in research and development (R&D), design and production. In R&D, it helps to cut down on laboratory experiments and pilot plant runs while in design, it enables a speedier development with simpler comparisons of various alternatives. Lastly, in production, it can be used for risk-free analysis of various what-if-scenario (Sylvia and Orchanian,

Open Document