In this study, the Henry's Law Constant and the activity coefficients in infinite dilution in a mass fraction of 25%, and 50% of methyldiethanolamine (MDEA) aqueous solution within the temperature range of 298-348 K at atmospheric pressure, were measured. An inert gas stripping method was used to perform all the measurements. The new values of Henry's Law Constant and the activity coefficients in infinite dilution correlation with solute molecular size were explained. The influence of the solvent is discussed taking into consideration the heat of absorptions for different MDEA concentrations. Experimental results are compared to literature data wherever available.
Combined degumming and bleaching is the first stage of processing in a modern physical refining plant. In the current practice, the amount of phosphoric acid (degumming agent) and bleaching earth (bleaching agent) added during this process is usually fixed within a certain range. There is no system that can estimate the right amount of chemicals to be added in accordance with the quality of crude palm oil (CPO) used. The use of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for an improved operating procedure was explored in this process. A feed forward neural network was designed using a back-propagation training algorithm. The optimum network for the response factor of phosphoric acid and bleaching earth dosages prediction were selected from topologies with the smallest validation error. Comparisons of ANN predicted results with industrial practice were made. It is proven in this study that ANN can be effectively used to determine the phosphoric acid and bleaching earth dosages for the combined degumming and bleaching process. In fact, ANN gives much more precise required dosages depending on the quality of the CPO used as feedstock. Therefore, the combined degumming and bleaching process can be further optimised with savings in cost and time through the use of ANN.
In Natural Gas Liquid (NGL) recovery, distillation process is the most common and widely used separation method. The productions of ethane, propane, butane and stabilized condensate are achieved through a series of conventional distillation columns which require massive amount of energy consumption, contributing more than 40% of the overall plant energy thus increasing the operating cost. This work focuses on energy saving in natural gas liquid processing by comparing the integrated side-stripper column with the conventional separation trains at steady state using a commercial simulator, Aspen Plus HYSYS. Energy analysis from the study shows that the integrated column arrangement which implement the side-stripper configuration achieved favourable result as it offers the highest percentage in energy reduction which is up to 68% (for reboiler) and 70% (for condenser). Consequently, this can be linked to the reduction of operating cost for hot and cool duties and trim down the overall production cost for existing NGL recovery plant.
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