Ethylene oxide hydration to mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) — a PENG-ROBINSON process flowsheet
Ethylene oxide reacts uncatalyzed with excess water at 200 C to mono-ethylene glycol (MEG, antifreeze/PET feedstock); the excess-water dilution that suppresses the over-reaction to di-/tri-ethylene glycol byproducts is reflected in the large water excess on the feed, and a downstream column concentrates MEG in the bottoms while excess water leaves overhead for recycle. Kinetics basis: Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2009, 48, 10840.
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- Rigorous PENG-ROBINSON thermodynamics, solved by the same engine every simulation runs on.
- 5 unit operations modeled: MIX, RXN, COOL, Degas, COL.
- Focus areas: Hydration, Reactor, Glycol production.
- Thermodynamics
- PENG-ROBINSON
- Components
- ethylene_oxide, water, ethylene_glycol
- Unit operations
- MIXRXNCOOLDegasCOL
Opens in a new tab, loaded straight into the app — no setup.
Read the step-by-step guideReproduce this exact result from Python — the real client.get_example() → run_and_wait() path, not a mockup.
from flowsim.sdk import FlowSimClient
client = FlowSimClient()
example = client.get_example("ethylene-oxide-glycol")
sim = client.create_simulation(example["title"], example["flowsheet"])
result = client.run_and_wait(sim["id"])
print(result["status"]) # "converged"
streams = client.streams(sim["id"])Related models
Ethylene oxide synthesis through to glycol
The full EO/MEG chain in one flowsheet, upstream of the standalone hydration example: ethylene and oxygen react over a silver catalyst to ethylene oxide (low per-pass ethylene conversion, ~10%, is realistic — high conversion pushes the competing total-combustion side reaction, which this model represents as a second reactor consuming a fixed share of the same ethylene at ~80% EO selectivity). A cooled flash condenses EO (and reaction water) from the unreacted ethylene/oxygen/CO₂ vented for combustion-side purge; the condensed EO then hydrates with fresh water to MEG exactly as in the standalone hydration example. No ethylene/O₂ recycle loop (an honest simplification — real plants recycle unreacted ethylene at high ratio).
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