Simulation and optimization of ethanol amine production plant

An industrial Ethanol Amine (EA) production plant was simulated and optimized. Due to lack of accurate reaction rate information, the first step involved obtaining reliable kinetic data from the SRI (Stanford Research Institute) industrial database and calculation using error minimization method. In the next step, by implementing the obtained reaction kinetics the whole plant was simulated using Hysys software. Simulation results were compared with the SRI data and showed that there is acceptable agreement between simulation and the measured industrial data. In the next step of study by applying the gradient search (GS) optimization technique the plant was optimized using: feeding ammonia to ethylene oxide (EO) molar ratio, water flow rate in the feed stream, and reactor temperature as optimization variables. Employing process profit as objective function the optimal operating conditions were found to be: ammonia to EO ratio of 5 (mol/mol), water flow rate of 52.59 kg mol/hr and reactor temperature of 85 °C.