Simulation And Analysis Of Methanol Production In Coal Chemical Industry

The analysis of production bottlenecks and operation parameters is very essential for achieving a highly-optimized methanol production process in the large-scale coal chemical industry. In this work, the methanol production process including gasification, shift, purification, synthesis and distillation sections was established by using Aspen Plus software package. Purification and synthesis sections are specially analyzed and optimized.The rectisol is widely used in methanol production process due to its special characteristics, such as high solution capacity and separation selectivity for acid gases. In this contribution, the rectisol section was simulated by Aspen Plus. The methanol absorber was intensively analyzed. The simulation results were proved to be consistent with the actual production processes. In addition, for achieving the separation demands, sensitivity analysis of methanol flow rate and temperature were carried out. The operation parameters were optimized. Moreover, the hydraulics calculations were performed for T01 and T02 blocks. The results indicate that the production bottlenecks of T01 and T02 are on the 30-35 plate and 1-10 plate, respectively.The one-dimensional pseudo-homogeneous mathematical model for methanol reactor with heat exchanging plates was developed and simulated with Aspen Plus. The simulation results were in high accordance with the experimental measurements. The influence of the inlet temperature, operation pressure, cooling water pressure and inlet flow rate was extensively investigated. The catalyst activity distribution and crude methanol yield at various reactor height and different reaction time were obtained.Gasification, shift and distillation sections were also simulated and optimized. Under the correct simulation of gasification section, the sensitivity analysis of vaporization pressure and oxygen-to-coal ratio was made to get the optimized operation conditions. Finally, the shift section was simulated and the optimized values of water flow rate and reaction temperature were achieved. With respect to distillation section, the location of side extraction and reflux ratio of main columns were analyzed and optimized. Finally, the whole process has been simulated successfully.