Process Simulation Of Acrylic Acid And N-butyl Acrylate Unit

Acrylic acid and acrylic esters are important polymer materials. The deep processing products of them are widely used as coating, chemical fiber, leather, papermaking, textile, plastics, medical materials and other fields. As increase of application range, the demand for acrylic acid and acrylate is growing. The study on production process of acrylic acid and acrylate becomes more and more important. In the propylene oxidation and acrylic acid esterification, by-product and product intermix together. To get polymer grade products, further study on separation of acrylic acid and separation of n-butyl acrylate is very important for the improvement of process.The process simulation of 80000 t/y acrylic acid separation device and 80000 t/y n-butyl acrylate device are carried out by using Aspen Plus simulation software. In the simulation, The NRTL-NTH is selected in in simulation of quench tower, light component separation tower, acetic acid tower, acrylic acid purification tower and other equipment. The UNIFAC is selected in simulation of esterification reactor, dehydration tower, alcohol topping tower, esters purification tower and alcohol distillation tower. The UNIF-DMD is selected in simulation of washing tower. The UNIFAC is selected in simulation of rest equipment. Based on the study above, separation equipment model and simulation process of acrylic acid separation device and n-butyl acrylate device are established. The simulation results agree well with actual value, verifying the reliability of the model.Based on the simulation of acrylic acid separation device and n-butyl acrylate process, the effect of process variables including theoretical plates, reflux ratio, overhead recovery ratio and feed stage on the unit is investigated by the use of sensitivity analysis tool. The optimal process variables are obtained. After the optimization of process variables, the purity of acrylic acid is 99.96%. The total heat load of acrylic acid separation device is decreased by 8.23%. The purity of n-butyl acrylate is 99.63%. The total heat load of n-butyl acrylate device is decreased by 5.66%.