Investigation of the optimal feedstock mixing ratio for the ethylene production plant

Abstract

Currently, Plant X utilizes a feedstock consisting of a mixture of ethane and propane to produce 75,400 kg/h of ethylene. During its operation, by altering the feedstock ratio from 100% propane to a mixture of 50% ethane and 50% Propane, the plant has successfully reduced feedstock procurement costs while still meeting output requirements. However, Plant X has only studied the 50-50 feedstock mixing ratio option based on feedstock prices, leaving other potential feedstock mixing options not yet investigated, which would probably yield higher profits. In this work, different Ethane-Propane ratio mixing scenarios for the feedstock are investigated to achieve improved economic efficiency. This investigation is conducted based on the process modeling within the Ethylene production plant. The study encompasses an overview of the current state of research both domestically and internationally, as well as the foundational technology behind Ethylene production. These technological processes are simulated and modeled using Aspen HYSYS software. Various Ethane-Propane mixing ratios are then simulated to select the optimal approach that meets economic and engineering criteria. The results from this work show that the feedstock mixing ratio of 72% Ethane - 28% Propane yields the maximum efficiency. A practical contribution of this work is to propose an improvement of Ethylene production for Plant X. In addition, since the entire production process has been studied and modeled using the standard workflow of HYSYS, a specical software package, the results and report of this work would be a good technical reference for in-depth researches in the numerical modeling of engineering processes in chemical industry in general, and in particular in petrochemical industry.