Regeneration of catalyst and CO2 recovery

Along with the production of butadiene, there is a decomposition of butane and butadiene at the reactor. The decomposition of those hydrocarbon will form the carbon and also the hydrogen. The hydrogen is flow together with the product stream while the formation of carbon will deposited and cause the coking in the reactor. Thus, a regeneration of reactor is required by a combustion of the coke. An air with 76.9% nitrogen and 23.1% oxygen is compressed to 2 atm and feed into the reactor and burn the coke that deposited. An excess of 20% oxygen is feed to ensure complete burning of the carbon. The combustion is occur at 600C and 2atm. Since the carbon dioxide is one of product of combustion and the emission will cause the air pollution , a treatment on this waste gas is necessary. The gas product from the combustion is consisting of 24.7% CO2. A solvent absorption is used to capture and recover the CO2. The absorption with monoethanolamine (MEA) or similar solvents is the most likely current process for capturing CO2 from the flue gas. After the regeneration of reactor, the flue gas is heated and compressed before feed in the absorption tower to fulfilled the required condition of CO2 absorption. Besides, a stream of 30% MEA solution is feed into the top of absorber tower and act as a solvent. A countercurrent flow of solvent with the flue gas that feed on the bottom of the absorber can ensure a better absorption of CO2. From the absorption column, the CO2 rich solvent from the bottom product is feed into a another column to recover the MEA solvent. At the same time, the top product which contain mainly nitrogen and oxygen is release to the atmosphere. The stripper column is the second column here and it can recover most of the MEA and water from the CO2-rich solvent stream. From the overhead product of stripper column, a vapor stream of CO2 and water is passed through a condenser and condense out the water. After that, the CO2 is compress to 18 atm and cool to -23C which is a storage condition of liquid CO2. The water from the condenser can be used as a purging purpose in other unit operation. Before the recycle of the MEA solution into the absorption tower, it need to be regenerate to fulfilled the condition required. First, it pass through the heat exchanger and transfer the heat to the CO2-rich solvent stream. This can save the energy to cool the recycled MEA solution . Since the exchange of heat is not enough to cool it to 40C, it is further cooled by using a cooler. After that, the MEA recycle stream is make up with the fresh feed of MEA solution before pump into the column.