DE Approach in Development of a Detailed Reaction Network for Liquid Phase Selective Hydrogenation of Methylacetylene and Propadiene in a Trickle Bed Reactor

Abstract

Methylacetylene (MA) and propadiene (PD) present in the raw C3 cut, as the major source of propylene production, are poisonous to catalyst for polymerization plants. So a methylacetylene–propadiene (MAPD) converter is usually required to improve the yield as well as purity of the propylene stream by reduction of the amount of MA and PD present in the raw C3 cut. In this study, a mathematical modeling is developed for an industrial liquid phase selective hydrogenation of MAPD. In the process model, a new reaction network based on 6 reactions considering green oil formation and unsaturated C4-cut compounds hydrogenation is proposed. To accomplish this purpose, a Langmuir–Hinshelwood–Hougen–Watson (LH-HW) mechanism is used for this process on an industrial scale. To estimate the reaction rate parameters, the absolute deviations between the model results and the plant data are minimized by applying a differential evolution (DE) optimization technique. To prove the accuracy of the proposed model, simulation results are compared with plant data, and an acceptable agreement is achieved. Then molar flow rates of components, reaction rates profiles, thermal behavior, as well as physical and hydrodynamic properties are verified along the reactor.