Pinch Analysis For Styrene Production With Lummus/UOP Smart SM Technology

Abstract

Styrene is an organic compound used for the synthesis of polymers, co-polymers, and rubber. Generally, the reaction to form styrene comes from the dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene. This reaction occurs when the compound is in the vapor phase and is endothermic. One of the technologies for ethylbenzene dehydrogenation is Lummus/UOP Smart SM. This technology uses oxygen to heat the reaction and makes the hydrogen disappear, so the reacting reaches the highest ethylbenzene conversion. The focus of this research was pinch analysis on Lummus/UOP Smart SM. The first step in pinch analysis is data extraction. An alternative is to perform pinch analysis with a composite curve, problem table, shifted composite curve, and grand composite curve. Then is continued to create a design Heat Exchanger Network (HEN). The application of pinch analysis to evaluate heating duty, cooling duty, Maximum Energy Recovery (MER), and determine the exact HEN for optimal energy. In this research, the integration of the process showed not optimal results, especially in cooling duty, because the energy recovery was obtained small, and for heating duty saved about 14%.