Ethylene Process Flowsheets & Simulations
Explore 4 validated, solved Ethylene simulation flowsheets in MaximaLabs — real components: ethane, ethylene, h2, n_heptane, methane, propylene. Open any one directly in your browser.
Solved via: PENG-ROBINSON.
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
228 0
View & openNaphtha steam cracker: furnace, quench, compression, cryo train
The full ethylene-plant process shape (steam-methane-cracking's headline technology, e.g. Linde's steam cracking line): a fired-heater convection preheat, a three-reactor lumped pyrolysis furnace, a transfer-line-exchanger quench, a primary fractionator pulling off pyrolysis gasoline, two-stage compression with interstage knockouts, selective acetylene hydrogenation, and a cryogenic cold train (cold-flash light-gas rejection, deethanizer, C₂ splitter, depropanizer) delivering four real products — ethylene, propylene, a butadiene-rich C₄ cut, and a pygas/heavy-ends byproduct — plus an H₂/CH₄-rich tail gas and two knockout condensate streams.
30 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON
239 2
View & openOxidative dehydrogenation of ethane to ethylene + acetic acid (EDHOX concept)
Linde's EDHOX technology co-produces ethylene AND acetic acid from ethane and oxygen in one catalytic step (a proprietary mixed-metal catalyst in a multi-tubular salt-cooled reactor), with combined ethylene+acetic-acid selectivity published above 93% and the CO₂ by-product of over-oxidation recovered pure (no nitrogen dilution, since the oxidant is pure O₂, not air). Modeled here as three chained fixed-conversion reactors on real, exactly mass-balanced reactions: the main dehydrogenation (C₂H₆ + 0.5 O₂ → C₂H₄ + H₂O), the acetic-acid co-production path (C₂H₆ + 1.5 O₂ → CH₃COOH + H₂O), and a minor full-oxidation loss path (C₂H₆ + 3.5 O₂ → 2 CO₂ + 3 H₂O) accounting for the un-selective balance — the same 'illustrative, not fitted' posture as the naphtha cracker's furnace, since Linde's catalyst kinetics are proprietary and not published. The per-reaction conversions here are tuned to reproduce the one real published number (>93% combined selectivity: this flowsheet computes ~96%), not an assumed per-pass ethane conversion, which Linde doesn't publish.
10 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON
186 0
View & openLDPE: high-pressure free-radical ethylene polymerization
Low-density polyethylene is genuinely made by free-radical polymerization of ethylene at very high pressure (~2000 atm here, in the real 1500-3000 atm industrial range) and high temperature — the exact kinetics MaximaLabs's existing polymerization unit op already models (Arrhenius CSTR, method-of-moments Mn/Mw/PDI), previously only ever demonstrated on an arbitrary 'ethanol' stand-in monomer with a fictional molar mass. This uses the real monomer (ethylene, real molar mass 28.05 g/mol) and the real thermo package for it (peng-robinson, not the alcohol/water-tuned NRTL the placeholder examples used).
3 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON
190 2
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