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Simple Combustion Reactor with Aspen HYSYS V8.0

1. Lesson Objectives

Use conversion reactor block

Determine air flow rate needed for a clean burn
Determine heat available from a fuel stream

2. Prerequisites

Aspen HYSYS V8.0

Understanding of enthalpy of combustion

3. Background
Natural gas, which is primarily methane, is distributed in underground pipes. The pressure in these pipes varies
depending on where in the pipe it is: the closer to the pumping station, the higher the pressure. An industrial
customer can expect to get natural gas at around 60 psig, and is typically charged per cubic foot of natural gas
used. Methane burns in the following reaction:
CH4 + 2 O2 CO2 + 2 H2O
The examples presented are solely intended to illustrate specific concepts and principles. They may not
reflect an industrial application or real situation.

4. Problem Statement and Aspen HYSYS Solution

Problem
Determine how much energy is available from a 5 ft 3/h (0.472 kg/h) fuel stream that consists of only methane at
60 psig. The air feed should be approximated with 80 mol-% nitrogen and 20 mol-% oxygen. There should be
10% excess oxygen in the air stream so the fuel-air mixture is not too rich. Assume the exhaust is 182 C. Report
the air flow rate in mol/h and ft 3 /h (at 1 atm) in addition to the available heat in kW.

Mole Balance
Two moles of oxygen are required to combust each mole of methane. Oxygen is one fifth of the moles in air.
Therefore there will need to be ten moles of air for each mole of methane for a stoichiome tric mixture. A 10%
excess requires a 10% increase in the relative amount of air, or 11 moles of air for each mole of methane.

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Aspen HYSYS Solution

4.01.

Start Aspen HYSYS V8.0. Select New to create a new simulation.

4.02.

Create a component list. In the navigation pane find Component Lists and select Add to create a new
HYSYS component list. Add Oxygen, Nitrogen, Methane, Carbon Dioxide, and Water to the component
list.

4.03.

Add a fluid package. Go to Fluid Packages and select Add. Select Peng-Robinson as the property
package.

4.04.

Define reaction. Go to Reactions and click New to create a new reaction set. In the form for the newly
created reaction set, click Add Reaction and select Hysys, Conversion.

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4.05.

Double click Rxn-1 to open the Conversion Reaction: Rnx-1 window. Enter the following information.
Notice that the Reaction Heat is automatically calculated to be -8.0e+05 kJ/kgmole.

4.06.

Attach reaction to fluid package. In the Reaction Set 1 form, click the Add to FP button. Select Basis-1.

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4.07.

At this point, you are ready to move to the simulation environment. To do so, click the Simulation
button at the bottom left of the screen.

4.08.

On the main flowsheet create a material stream using the Model Palette. Select the icon for material
stream and place it onto the flowsheet.

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4.09.

Double click the stream to open the stream property window. Change the stream name to Methane,
and enter a Temperature of 25C, a Pressure of 515 kPa, and a Mass Flow of 0.472 kg/h.

4.10.

Go to the Composition form and enter a Mole Fraction of 1 for Methane. You will notice that after
entering the stream composition, the status bar will turn green and say OK. This indicates that stream is
fully defined and solved for all parameters.

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4.11.

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Create a second material stream to be the air stream that is required for combustion. Double click on
the new material stream and enter the following information. Bold blue font indicates a user-entered
value. From the solved Methane stream, we know there are 0.02942 kgmole/hr of Methane. We
would like there to be 11 moles of air for each mole of methane, therefore we will enter a molar
flowrate of 0.324 kgmole/hr for the air stream. Enter a Mole Fraction of 0.2 for Oxygen and mole
fraction of 0.8 for Nitrogen. The stream should then solve.

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4.12.

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The flowsheet should now look like the following.

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4.13.

We will now place a valve in order to reduce the pressure of the methane stream to ambient pressure.
Select a Control Valve from the Model Palette and place it onto the flowsheet.

4.14.

Double click the valve to open the valve property window. In the Connections page select Methane as
the Inlet stream and create an Outlet called Methane-LP.

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4.15.

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Specify valve outlet pressure. Go to the Worksheet tab and enter a Pressure of 101.3 kPa for the
Methane-LP stream. The valve should solve.

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4.16.

Insert reactor. Press F12 to open the UnitOps window. Select the Reactors radio button and add a
Conversion Reactor to the flowsheet.

4.17.

In the Conversion Reactor property window select streams Air and Methane-LP as Inlet streams.
Create a Vapour Outlet stream called VAP-Out and a Liquid Outlet called LIQ-Out.

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4.18.

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Go to the Reactions tab. Select Set-1 for Reaction Set. The reactor should solve and the status should
turn green and say OK.

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4.19.

The flowsheet should now look like the following.

4.20.

To check results go to Worksheet tab of the Conversion Reactor. You can see that the stream VAP-Out
is leaving the reactor at an extremely high temperature. This is due to the high heat of reaction. To
calculate exactly how much energy is released from this reaction simply take the heat of reaction found
in the Reactions tab and multiply it by the methane molar flowrate. In this case, burning 5 ft 3 /h of
methane releases 6.5 kW.

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5. Conclusions
5 ft3 /h of methane produces 6.5 kW of heat. To run a quality, lean mixture there must be 280 ft 3 /h of air (that is
20 mol-% oxygen) which is 0.324 kgmole/h. The conversion reactor block is useful for quick simulations with
well understood reactions. Reactions with slow kinetics, or complex systems with series or parallel reactions are
outside the scope of this reactor model.
This simulation could also be created using a Gibbs reactor block. The Gibbs reactor is unique in that it can
function without a defined reaction set. This reactor block will minimize the Gibbs free energy of the reacting
system to calculate the product composition. This reactor block is useful when the exact reactions or kinetics
are unknown, and the reaction reaches equilibrium very quickly. It may be a useful exercise to repeat this
module using a Gibbs reactor and compare results.

6. Copyright
Copyright 2012 by Aspen Technology, Inc. (AspenTech). All rights reserved. This work may not be
reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of
AspenTech. ASPENTECH MAKES NO WARRANTY OR REPRESENTATION, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, WITH
RESPECT TO THIS WORK and assumes no liability for any errors or omissions. In no event will AspenTech be
liable to you for damages, including any loss of profits, lost savings, or other incidental or consequential
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