Ethylene production from diluted bioethanol solutions

Abstract

Ethylene production by ethanol dehydration has been investigated over a set of zeolites with BEA structure in acidic form (HAlBEA). The effect on Ni addition (up to 0.03g/g (3 mass%)) is explored as a means to improve ethylene selectivity limiting the formation of heavier byproducts. The reaction temperature has been varied between 300 and 500°C and the effect of cofeeding water has been also explored. Both an increase of the operating temperature and of the water/ethanol ratio can improve stability of coking and thus catalyst life. The use of diluted bioethanol solutions was shown to be beneficial for catalyst stability. The effect of possible impurities present in less purified raw materials was also checked by testing two diluted second generation bioethanol solutions (0.5 and 0.9g/g (50 and 90 mass%)). A first reactor layout and the integration with the bioethanol purification strategy are also proposed, including two purification options which are much less energy demanding than traditional rectification

Process Simulation for the Design and Scale Up of Heterogeneous Catalytic Process: Kinetic Modelling Issues

“…As the complexity of the reactions carried out in the process increases, this becomes one of the key issues to be settled prior to process design. In the following, we will consider the emblematic case of ethanol valorization into hydrogen or ethylene, as a pathway to the biorefinery exploitation [18][19][20][21]. In this view, a biomass-derived raw material is used to provide important chemicals/fuels in a more sustainable way.…”

“…Their esteems are reported in Table 5. 18 One can notice that both these configurations can be considered as 'autothermal reforming' ones, from a general point of view, since a co-feed of oxygen is actually injected in the burners, giving overall enthalpy balances more favorable than those of the pure SR without necessarily adding fresh fuels to this section-the situation, however, retains a practical difference since the heat exchange network is of course different from the true auto-sustained configuration of a non-endothermic reaction.…”

Kinetic Modelling at the Basis of Process Simulation for Heterogeneous Catalytic Process Design

“…As the complexity of the reactions carried out in the process increases, this becomes one of the key issues to be settled prior to process design. In the following, we will consider the emblematic case of ethanol valorisation into hydrogen or ethylene, as a pathway to the biorefinery exploitation [18][19][20][21]. In this view, a biomass-derived raw material is used to provide important chemicals/fuels in a more sustainable way.…”

“…Their esteems are reported in Table 5. 18 One can notice that both these configurations can be considered as "autothermal reforming" ones, from a general point of view, since a co-feed of oxygen is actually injected in the burners, giving overall enthalpy balances more favorable than those of the pure SR without necessarily add fresh fuels to this section -the situation, however, retains a practical difference since the heat exchange network is perforce different from the true auto-sustained configuration of a non-endothermic reaction.…”

The route from problem to solution in multistep continuous flow synthesis of pharmaceutical compounds

“…Our ongoing efforts in this field 9 inspired us to summarize the difficulties concerning the integration of individually optimized chemical reactions into multistep systems, as well as common problems and their innovative solutions described in the recent literature [6][7][8][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] of API continuous flow synthesis, including analytics and purification methods.…”