Regular Article
Dynamic optimization of methanol synthesis section in the dual type configuration to increase methanol production
Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Shiraz University, Shiraz 71345, Iran
* Corresponding author: farsi@shirazu.ac.ir
Received:
9
March
2019
Accepted:
13
November
2019
The main object of this research is dynamic modeling and optimization of the methanol synthesis section in the dual type configuration considering catalyst deactivation to improve methanol production capacity. In the methanol unit, deactivation of CuO/ZnO/Al2O3 catalyst by sintering and low equilibrium conversion of reactions limit the production capacity, and changing operating temperature is a practical solution to overcome the production decay. In the first step, the considered process is modeled based on the mass and energy balance equations at dynamic condition. To prove the accuracy of developed model, the simulation results are compared with the plant data at the same operating conditions. In the second step, a dynamic optimization problem is formulated, and the optimal trajectories of manipulated variables are determined considering methanol production rate as the objective function. Finally, the performance of optimized process is compared with the conventional system at the same design conditions. The results show that operating at the optimal conditions increases methanol production capacity about 6.45%.
© S. Masoudi et al., published by IFP Energies nouvelles, 2019
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
