Design and Energy Analysis of Butyl Acetate Plant using Aspen HYSYS and Aspen Energy Analyzer

Abstract

This paper discusses the design of Butyl acetate production process by using Aspen Hysys. Heat integration is performed for the entire designed plant using Aspen Energy Analyzer. The proposed design consists of a mixer, continuous stirred tank reactor and two distillation columns. Methyl acetate reacts with butyl alcohol and gives the butyl acetate, methanol.  The paper is divided in to three parts. In the first part, the entire process plant developed for steady state simulations.  Butyl acetate product purity obtained is 95.23 mol%.  In the second part dynamic simulations are performed with plantwide control structure developed by providing decentralized controllers for the entire plant.  In the third part heat integrations are performed by using Aspen Energy Analyzer. Hot oil, medium pressure (MP) steam, low pressure (LP) steam  and air as hot and cold utilities was proposed to exchange heat with the process streams.  The heat exchange was integrated into an existing heat exchanger network (HEN), and the integration was analyzed using pinch analysis.  After analysis using retrofit studies an alternative HEN is proposed to save the energy.  The new retrofit HEN is achieved by adding a new heat exchanger and the payback period reported is 0.5956 years which is less than one year.