Operational Flexibility Analysis Of Chemical Plants

All chemical plants are designed according to certain foregone conditions of raw materials and utility, while the actual production conditions cannot always meet exactly the design values. Meanwhile, with time passing, a serial of problems such as catalyst deactivation and heat-exchanger fouling will inevitably occur. All of this requires certain feasibility of the chemical plants, to make sure its good adaptability to varying conditions.Detailed research has been done on theory of feasibility analysis of chemical plant in this paper, which specifies the necessity and universal method of feasibility analysis. Main content of the paper is as follows.(1) Necessity of feasibility analysis of chemical plant has been specified. Comparison of different methods of resolution of the feasibility coefficients has been conducted, thus establishing the mathematics model with the index method.(2) As an example, the feasibility of a methanol rectification tower in rectisol process and simple operation units has been analyzed and worked out with index method, as well as the feasible variation range of some uncertain parameters has been determined.(3) The feasibility of chemical plant is determined and the bottlenecks are found out based on the results of feasibility analysis, therefore the theoretical basis for retrofit of a plant is provided.(4) The universal property of MATLAB programming in resolution of feasibility coefficient of chemical plant has been proved.In addition, research on feasibility of CO2 recovery process from industrial exhaust gas has been conducted. By using 15% content of MEA solution as absorbent, the design of the absorber tower and the regenerator tower is conducted. And the method's feasibility is approved.