ISSN print edition: 0366-6352 ISSN electronic edition: 1336-9075 Registr. No.: MK SR 9/7 Published monthly

Kinetics development for controlled mono-methyl amine-ethoxylation reaction using laboratory scale autoclave experiments and process plant reactor data simulations

Raghu Raja Pandiyan Kuppusamy, Anita Zade, and Swati Neogi

Department of Chemical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Warangal, Telangana, India

E-mail: raghuraj@nitw.ac.in

Received: 24 November 2021  Accepted: 4 November 2022

Abstract:

A methodology using laboratory-scale autoclave reactor data and industrial process plant data is proposed to develop and validate the kinetics of controlled ethoxylation of mono-methyl amine (MMA) solution. Initially, the ethoxylation of mono-methyl amine solution was carried out using an autoclave reactor under isothermal conditions, and the rate of products: mono-methyl ethanolamine (MMEA), methyl-di-ethanol amine (MDEA), and glycol ethers of methyl-di-ethanol amine (MDEA-P) was established. Then, the Aspen Plus process simulator sensitivity analysis was performed with the variations in the kinetics model parameters to mimic the real plant product distribution. Finally, the amine-ethoxylation reaction kinetics was validated by comparing the activation energies obtained from classical kinetics modelling through autoclave reactor experiments and simulation-based real plant sensitivity analysis. From the results, E_a = 19.46 kcal/mol and A = 6.02*10⁸ for MMEA formation, E_a = 4.2 kcal/mol and A = 21.12 for MDEA formation and E_a = 9.46 kcal/mol and A = 307 for MDEA-P formation, were found to be the optimized kinetic parameters from autoclave laboratory experiments and industrial reactor data simulations.

Keywords: Amines; Ethoxylation; Kinetics; Modelling; Activation energy; Aspen plus

Full paper is available at www.springerlink.com.

DOI: 10.1007/s11696-022-02583-5

Chemical Papers 77 (4) 1887–1906 (2023)