Simulation And Optimization Of Maleic Anhydride Recovery By Solvent Method

Maleic anhydride (MA) is a very important raw material, which widely used inpharmaceutical and other industries. MA recovery process is an important unit operation inthe production process. Methods for recovering MA are water absorption and solventabsorption. Energy consumption of water absorption is large due to the dehydration process,and equipment in the process could easily lead to corrosion and clogging, thus it becomesgradually eliminated. Because of low power consumption, stable operation, etc., DBP solventabsorption becomes the main process for MArecovery.In this paper, ASPEN PLUS software was selected to establish absorption and desorptionmodel, which are consistent with the actual MA recovery process, and simulation of theprocess was conducted. By means of sensitivity analysis of the process parameters, theoptimal operating parameters were determined. The simulation results indicate that the loss ofMA is too large, and the yield of MA is still need to be improved. Based on the simulationresults, process optimization and retrofit was carried out, it was found that the light oilre-flash could reduce the MA concentration of desorption bottom from1.6%to0.3%, whichreduced the loss of MA and the load of subsequent MA solvent extraction. Furthermore, byadding an exhaust scrubber, DBP absorption was selected to recover part of MA gas in thevacuum desorption process.The yield of MAcan be increased from90.66%to98.07%after the process optimizationand retrofit, which improves the efficiency of the process.