Model Development and Validation of Ethyl tert-Butyl Ether Production Reactors Using Industrial Plant Data

Abstract

This work considers the development and validation of a first-principles dynamic model for the production of ethyl tert-butyl ether (ETBE) in the presence of the coproducts diisobutene (DIB) and tert-butyl alcohol (TBA). Desulfonation is assumed to be the main deactivation mechanism of the catalyst used, an acidic ion-exchange resin. Operational data from an industrial ETBE production plant, taken over the period of 1 year, were used to estimate both the deactivation and DIB kinetic constant parameters. A data reconciliation strategy was employed to convert the raw data into a consistent data set, representing the most likely process operation data. The parameters estimated were incorporated in a set of detailed mass and energy balances, together with additional kinetic and physical information from the literature, to originate a distributed parameter model capable of accurately describing the operation of two industrial reactors used for the production of ETBE. Model development and validation were perfo...