Process optimization of an industrial acetic acid dehydration progress via heterogeneous azeotropic distillation

The simulated process model of the HAc dehydration process under actual overloaded condition was conducted by amending the model of standard condition in our previous work using the process data collected from actual production. Based on the actual process model, the operation optimization analysis of each plant(HAc dehydration column, decanter and NPA recycle column) was conducted using Residue Curve Maps(RCMs),sensitivity analysis and software optimization module. Based on the optimized parameters, the influence of feed impurity MA and the temperature of decanter on the separating effect and energy consumption of the whole process were analyzed. Then the whole process operation optimizing strategy was proposed with the objective that the total reboiler duty Q Total of C-1 and C-3 reaches the minimum value, keeping C-1 and C-3 at their optimized separation parameters obtained above, connecting all the broken recycle and connection streams, and using the temperature of D-1 as operation variable. The optimization result shows that the total reboiler duty Q Total of the whole process can reach the minimum value of 128.32 × 10~6 k J·h^(-1) when the temperature of decanter is 352.35 K, and it can save 5.94 × 10~6 k J·h^(-1), about 2.56 t·h^(-1) low-pressure saturated vapor.

Catalytic combustion of methane over a highly active and stable Ni0/Ce02 catalyst

In the last decades,many reports dealing with technology for the catalytic combustion of methane(CH4)have been published.Recently,attention has increasingly focused on the synthesis and catalytic activity of nickel oxides.In this paper,a NiO/CeO2 catalyst with high catalytic performance in methane combustion was synthe-sized via a facile impregnation method,and its catalytic activity,stability,and water-resistance during CH4 com-bustion were investigated.X-ray diffraction,low-tempera-ture N2 adsorption,thermogravimetric analysis,Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy,hydrogen temperature programmed reduction,methane temperature programmed surface reaction,Raman spectroscopy,electron paramag-netic resonance,and transmission electron microscope characterization of the catalyst were conducted to determine the origin of its high catalytic activity and stability in detail.The incorporation of NiO was found to enhance the concentration of oxygen vacancies,as well as the activity and amount of surface oxygen.As a result,the mobility of bulk oxygen in CeO2 was increased.The presence of CeO2 prevented the aggregation of NiO,enhanced reduction by NiO,and provided more oxygen species for the combustion ofCH4.The results of a kinetics study indicated that the reaction order was about 1.07 for CH4 and about 0.10 for O2 over the NiO/CeO2 catalyst.