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Equilibrium reactor Process Flowsheets & Simulations

Explore 4 validated, solved Equilibrium reactor simulation flowsheets in MaximaLabs — real components: n2, h2, ammonia, ethane, ethylene, toluene. Open any one directly in your browser.

Solved via: PENG-ROBINSON.

SYN
RX
NH3
NEOM, Saudi Arabia

Green ammonia synthesis

An equilibrium reactor runs N₂ + 3H₂ ⇌ 2NH₃ on green-hydrogen syngas (Keq illustrative) — the new-energy leapfrog workflow.

3 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON

17 0

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FEED
Crack
Quench
COMP
Cool2
SEP
H2tail
feed
dist
btms
COL
Ethylene
Ethane
Mont Belvieu, Texas, USA

Ethane steam cracker

A simplified thermal-cracking train: an equilibrium reactor converts ethane to ethylene + H2 at furnace conditions (1100 K), then a quench, compression, and a cold flash strip the H2 tail gas before a C2 splitter separates ethylene product from unconverted ethane. An equilibrium reactor is used here rather than the kinetic reactor because the latter's concentration term always uses a liquid-phase density (a real gap for a vapor-phase reaction at 1100 K) -- noted, not fixed, out of scope for this example. The C2 splitter needs many stages and high reflux since ethylene/ethane relative volatility is modest. From the ChemSep casebook (ethane cracker).

10 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON

17 0

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FEED
RX
Quench
SEP
Recycle GAS
Letdown
SEP2
STAB GAS
COL
Benzene
Toluene OUT
Baytown, Texas, USA

Toluene hydrodealkylation (HDA)

Toluene + H2 react to benzene + methane over an equilibrium reactor (900 K), then a quench, a high-pressure separator, and a letdown-valve-plus-flash stabilizer strip dissolved H2/methane before the aromatics split -- the same SEP-LETDOWN-SEP2 degassing pattern used for methanol synthesis and CO2-from-natural-gas elsewhere in this gallery. The final benzene/toluene split uses a shortcut separator rather than a rigorous distillation column: even the small H2/methane trace left after stabilization has a pure-component bubble point far below any real column temperature (H2 at 1.5 bar: ~22 K), which corrupts the column's initial T-profile guess and the inside-out/Newton MESH solvers land on a physically nonsensical low-temperature root for this feed. A fix narrowed to just that seed was tried and reverted: it also changes the wide-boiling classification and the seed fed into the (otherwise-fine) inside-out solver for other columns, and broke the already-shipped methanol-synthesis example -- the same cross-example fragility already hit twice this session trying to patch the shared thermo core, so it's noted honestly here rather than chased further. From the ChemSep casebook (toluene HDA).

11 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON

17 0

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Fresh
MIX
RX
COOL
Flash
NH3 Product
Split
Recycle COMP
Purge
Yara Porsgrunn, Norway

Ammonia synthesis loop (Haber-Bosch, ChemSep casebook)

The classic industrial ammonia loop: fresh syngas joins recycled unconverted gas, reacts over an equilibrium reactor (N₂ + 3H₂ ⇌ 2NH₃) at synthesis conditions, is chilled to condense high-purity liquid ammonia, and the remaining vapor splits into a recycle (back to the loop) and a purge — the purge exists specifically to bleed off the inert argon a single-pass reactor could never consume, which would otherwise concentrate in the recycle forever.

9 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON

17 0

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