Team 7:Engineering an Alternate

Route to Styrene

Larae Baker

Adam JonesMichael Heslinga

Jonathan Bush

Maxine Bent

Outline

• Re-introduction

• Feasibility

• Struggles

• Design Norms

• Changes

Brief (re-)Introduction• Design a styrene plant on a computer

simulator– Production capacity of 2 billion pounds of

styrene per year; ~17% of current US market– Currently sold at $0.70/lb

• New chemical process – Dow Chemical and Snamprogetti

PFD

Reactor #1:Alkylation

Reaction #2:Dehydrogenation Separations

BenzeneEthylbenzene

Ethane

Styrene, Ethylene

(unreacted Benzene, Ethane,

Ethylene)

Benzene and byproducts

Styrene

Ethylene

Feasibility• Chemical

– Patents

• Separations– Current industry practices

• Financial– Capital Investment and Operating Cost– Less costly raw materials– No Prototype

Struggles• Proprietary Information

– Literature– Contact at Dow Chemical

• Reaction Kinetics – Catalyst Design

• Design norms

Four to six weeks in the lab can save you an hour in the library

- G.C. Quarderer

Design Norms

• Justice and Caring– Where to build a plant– NIMBY

• Environmental Stewardship– Possible recycling technology in progress– Use energy/raw material wisely– How to handle waste

• Creating something people need (at a lower cost)

Video found by Bob DeKrackerwww.americanchemistry.org

Changes since Last Presentation

• No lab work– Catalyst– Reagents– Equipment

• Solution– Develop lab experiments– Using heuristics

Where to go from here?

• Further Research

• Base Case Simulation

• Equipment Design– Reactor - Alkylation– Reactor - Dehydrogenation– Separations Equipment

• Economic Optimization

THANKS FOR LISTENING!

QUESTIONS?