Organic esters are an important class of industrial and commercial chemicals that can be found in solvents, plasticizer, food flavours, detergents, agrochemicals, and pharmaceuticals. The most common way to synthesis organic esters is with esterification or transesterification. Where esterification was the chosen method in this thesis. This thesis provides a techno-economic assessment on the production of propyl acetate and glycerol trivalerate through different continuous routes that is than compared with batch production under the same conditions. Simulations was done on trivalerate due to limited literature and data on pentaerythritol tetravalerate. Different continuous technologies that have been assessed in this thesis was plug flow reactor (PFR), Reactive Distillation (RD), and Reactive – Extractive Distillation (RED). The production of mono- and polyol esters with different unit operators was simulated in Aspen Plus V.14. Techno-Economic analysis was conducted with APEA (Aspen Process Economic Analyzer), where cost of raw materials, products, and utilities was inserted to evaluate annual operating cost and product sale. Reaction kinetic for esterification of trivalerate was estimated by obtained values from simulations of a Gibbs reactor in Aspen Plus at four different temperatures. Kinetics was estimated by applying the relation between the chemical equilibrium constant and the Arrhenius equation. Where rate constant and activation energy for forward and revers reaction was obtained by varying min and max values for lsqcurvefit in MATLAB and then validate results with published kinetics. Results from production of propyl acetate with batch, PFR and RED provides an annual profit of approximately 1 M$ at a capacity of 41.65 kton/year. The three different process provides also approximately an equal capital cost, operating cost, equipment cost, and installed cost according to APEA. RED provided the lowest propyl acetate yield at 93%, batch and PFR provided a propyl acetate yield of 94%. Results from production of trivalerate with batch, PFR, and RD provides an annual profit of 5.4, 5.78, and 9.2 M$ at a capacity of approximately 5 kton/year. Where RD process provides the lowest capital cost, operating cost, equipment cost, and installed cost compared to batch and PFR processes according to APEA. Obtained results from production of trivalerate can be used to evaluate the economic and technical feasibility of a continuous production plant for pentaerythritol tetravalerate (PETV). Where initial simulations show a good economic and technical viability of a continuous ester production plant.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-100742 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Isberg, Gustav |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Institutionen för ingenjörs- och kemivetenskaper (from 2013) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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