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Design of a Plug Flow Reactor for Production of Refrigerants from Natural Gas Chlorination
Abstract
The design of a plug flow reactor and distillation column for the production of refrigerants from natural gas chlorination, was aimed at achieving high purity volume percent of Methyl Chloride (CH3Cl) and Methylene Chloride as desired products. Aspen HYSYS software was used to simulate the reactor. The reaction was carried out at a temperature of 3000C and 1atm Pressure, Methane to Chlorine ratio was set at 1.5:1 to favour the production of Methyl Chloride and Methylene Chloride. The plug flow reactor was designed to processed 200,000 metric tonnes per year of Natural gas, the reactor model developed was simulated using polymath 6.1 solver and the results obtained provides parameters for reactor volume, Reactor length, Space Time, Space Velocity, rate of heat generation and pressure drop along reactor length, percentage of the molar flow rates of the various refrigerants produced at the specified condition. HYSYS simulation of this design is found to improve both engineering, Safety and energy efficiency of the overall system of Production. This provides a very powerful approach to steady state simulation, hence an effective tool for conducting a process design of equipment in the industry. The design of the natural gas chlorination with the focus to demonstrates the significances in the production of Methyl Chloride at given process condition was observed to be a controlling factor in the yield and as the reactor capacity increases there is tendency of increase in production. This study revealed that Aspen HYSYS is a useful tool in designing process plant, because of its application in the chemical industries.
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