Process Engineering For Capacity Increasing Revamp Of Methanol Plant In The Scale Of 30, 000 Tons Per Years

Methanol is one kind of simplest but very important basic organic chemical raw materials, which has been wildly used in various filed, such as organic synthesis, dying material, pesticide, painting, automobiles and national defense. At present, the mainly filed for its application is to produce formaldehyde, which will be furthered used as the raw material for the production of adhesive agent, formaldehyde, pentaerythritol, 1,4 butanol and so on. With the development of nation economy and the shortage of petroleum source, the research and study on the new resource of methanol becomes considerably important. To meet itself development, the small-scale companies apply new technology to revamp its existing plant aiming at maximum profit with minimum investment. Therefore, the research and study on the existing methanol would be worthy, essential and meaningful.This article refers to the national and international methanol new technology including revamp technology, tracks the typical process technology, i.e. the technologies from ICI company of U.K, Lurgi company of Germany and Topsoe company from Denmark. Finally the process design selects the well-know and reliable technology to revamp the existing plant to meeting the production demands with the consideration of the nature of the plant.Based on the domestic technology, the engineering design in the article applies the process of reliable pure oxygen heating exchange conversion in serial, to revamp the Company's existing methanol plant aiming at capacity increasing from 30,000 tons per years to 60,000 tons per years. The design mainly contains: the current condition and the basis revamp, revamp schedule, process flow design, flow description, main equipment and analysis from technical and economical point of view. The design was simulated with the advanced flow simulation software of ASPEN PLUS, and used ASPEN TASC2004 for calculation of the critical heat exchangers so as to optimizes the plant and provide the material balance sheets to facilitate the design of utilities, package equipment and piping.Through a preliminary technical and economical analysis, the yield for the revamp schedule is far above the industrial basic one, and the investment recovery term is short, which indicates the design is practical. In particular when the natural source becomes shorter and shorter, the revamp can have a good economical and social benefit while saving the investment and reducing the production cost.