Modeling of Radial Flow Reactors of Oxidative Reheat Process for Production of Styrene Monomer

Styrene plays an important role in industrial production plants due to its increasing use in the production of various products. Thus, availability of a simulating program for styrene monomer reactors is of major importance in reducing the problems of a styrene unit. In oxidative reheat technology, styrene monomer is produced from ethylbenzene dehydrogenation in radial flow reactors in the presence of the generated heat from hydrogen oxidation reaction. In this article mass, energy and momentum equations on radial direction are developed for styrene monomer reactors. Required kinetic rates and parameters have been adopted from the literature [1,2]. Then, by means of experimental data from industrial reactors and sequential quadratic programming (SQP) methods, suitable kinetic parameters are obtained. Comparison of simulator prediction data with industrial ones show that the simulation has been achieved adequately.