Experiment Study And Simulation Of Isobutane/Butenes Sulfuric Acid Alkylation Process

As one of the main commercial processes to produce alkylates, isobutane alkylation with sulfuric acid plays an important role in production and development of clean-burning gasoline. The alkylation of isobutane with butenes catalyzed by concentrated sulfuric acid has been in-vestigated on the basis of batch and continuous experiment, and simulation of effluent refri-geration alkylation process also has been conducted.The effect of acid-soluble hydrocarbon formed during alkylation in recycled sulfuric ac-ids on alkylate was studied, and the result showed that the product distribution changed sig-nificantly with various compositions of acid-soluble hydrocarbon and alkylates quality in-creased first then decreased with the increasing hydrocarbon content, so there existed an op-timum acid-soluble hydrocarbon value for alkylation. Then, the effects of residence time and feed composition on alkylation reaction in CSTR were investigated. The result indicated there was no longer significant change for alkylate quality when the residence time was over20min under experiment condition of isobutane-isobutene ratio8:1,acid-hydrocarbon ratio1.5:1, reaction temperature6℃. The content of isobutene in feed had a large effect on heavy end-products and the more mount of1-butene in feed the better alkylate quality. Moreover, the effluent refrigeration process including reaction section, refrigeration section and fraction section was simulated using Aspen software respectively. Integrating simulation modules of three individual sections, the simulation of whole effluent refrigeration alkylation process was accomplished. The simulation results were in good agreement with the industrial design data.