Development and Multiobjective Optimization of Improved Cumene Production Processes

Abstract

Multiobjective optimization (MOO) has been successfully used to improve the process design and operation, by finding trade-offs among conflicting objectives such as energy, capital cost, and profit. In this work, the cumene process design is modified to decrease the raw materials and product losses and to facilitate better energy integration. Here, two slightly different cumene process designs are presented and evaluated. One process design uses a column to vent off the undesired chemicals, whereas the other uses two flash tanks. Additionally, vapor recompression is applied in both the designs to recover energy. Then, MOO of both modified process designs is carried out to examine two trade-offs: total capital cost (TCC) versus material loss and TCC versus utility cost. For this, an Excel-based MOO program is used; it is based on the elitist nondominated sorting genetic algorithm. The cumene process design with column is found to be superior for the first trade-off, whereas the design with two flash tanks is better for the other trade-off. Further, both the designs are compared based on their cumene production capacities; column design is found to be overall superior. Finally, energy requirements of the developed cumene process designs are compared with those reported in recent studies.

Reducing process cost and CO2 emissions for extractive distillation by double-effect heat integration and mechanical heat pump

“…Alternatively, in the bottom flash heat pump (BF) [19], the bottom liquid is cooled down by expansion over a throttle valve to a temperature below that of the condenser. Then, it is evaporated at the In mechanical heat pumps, several studies [19][20][21][22] show that VRC process seems to have better performance in economical view over the VC and BF processes but it depends on the electricity price [23] and on the temperature lift [24]. However, there is no unanimous thermodynamic reason to prefer VRC process [25].…”

Review of extractive distillation. Process design, operation, optimization and control

“…The advantage of VRC and BF over VC is that a smaller heat transfer area and a lower temperature lift are used because the heat is exchanged only once. Several studies (Díez et al, 2009;Modla and Lang, 2013;Flegiel et al, 2015) show that VRC process seems to have better performance in economical view over the VC and BF processes but this depends on the electricity price and on the temperature lift (Chew et al, 2014;Reddy et al, 2014). However, there is no undisputed thermodynamic reason to prefer VRC process.…”

A Methodology for Optimization in Multistage Industrial Processes: A Pilot Study

“…Clearly, we can assume that all the intermediate quality functions values as well as are going to be minimized, so minimizing of have a chance to lead to a proper solution [5][6][7][8].…”