Reaction + distillation Process Flowsheets & Simulations
Explore 2 validated, solved Reaction + distillation simulation flowsheets in MaximaLabs — real components: methanol, dimethyl_ether, water, co, h2, co2. Open any one directly in your browser.
Solved via: PENG-ROBINSON.
DME synthesis (methanol dehydration)
Catalytic methanol dehydration (2 CH3OH -> (CH3)2O + H2O, 82% conversion) followed by two atmospheric-pressure columns: DMECOL rejects dimethyl ether overhead (~88% pure — the ternary's relative volatility at this pressure caps a single column's overhead purity there) via the inside-out method (a genuinely wide-boiling ternary — DME boils at -24 C, water at 100 C), then MEOHCOL recovers unconverted methanol (99.9% pure) from the water byproduct (99.3% pure). From the ChemSep casebook (DME_ie101583j).
8 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON
17 0
View & openMethanol synthesis (syngas loop)
Low-pressure syngas-to-methanol loop (CO + 2 H2 <-> CH3OH, equilibrium reactor at 80 bar/510 K). The high-pressure separator's crude liquid still carries several mol% dissolved CO2/H2/CO from the reactor loop, so a letdown valve plus a second flash (mirroring the HDA casebook's own SEP-LETDOWN-SEP2 degassing pattern) strips the bulk of it before the atmospheric column — dissolved permanent gas at that scale can otherwise mislead a bubble-point search onto a spurious low-temperature root nowhere near methanol/water's real ~340 K bubble point, so keeping the column's own feed genuinely light on non-condensables is the honest fix, not a thermo-solver workaround. From the ChemSep casebook (Methanol_iecr49p6150).
11 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON
17 0
View & open