Design and Control of a Reactive Distillation Process for Naphtha Hydrodesulfurization

Design and Control of a Reactive Distillation Process for Naphtha Hydrodesulfurization Reactive distillation (RD) based hydrodesulfurization (HDS) has been proposed as an alternative to conventional trickle-bed reactor technologies towards meeting the increasingly stringent fuel sulfur content specification [1]. In this work the steady state optimum design and control of a naphtha HDS process is studied. The process consists of an RD column followed by a closed loop H 2S absorption system using aqueous MDEA. Fresh naphtha and H2 are fed to an RD column which consists of a reactive tray section with a stripping section below it. Naphtha is fed into the reactive zone while H2 is fed towards the lower portion of the column. In addition to hydrodesulfurization in the RD column, the naphtha gets fractionated to recover desulfurized C7 free light naphtha as the distillate and desulfurized C6 free heavy naphtha as the bottoms. The excess hydrogen, H2S and other non-condensables leave the column along with some C4 - C5 hydrocarbons as vapor distillate. This vapor stream is sent to an H2S absorber to recover a desulfurized fuel gas stream which is recycled to the RD column. Some of the fuel gas is purged to prevent a build-up of inerts in the gas recycle loop. The H2S rich MDEA stream from the absorber is stripped to release the H2S and recirculate lean MDEA back to the absorber. Exploratory simulations show that the process can be designed to produce ppb level ultra low sulfur heavy naphtha for blending with gasoline. The RD column specifications are chosen as 1.6 wt% C 7 in the liquid distillate, 2.4 wt% C6 in the bottoms and a condenser temperature of 50 C with cooling water as the coolant. The absorber is designed for 4 ppm H2S in the fuel gas while the stripper is designed for 99% H2S recovery. The dominant design variables for the process are the RD column pressure, total H 2 to thiophene ratio in the RD column feed and the fuel gas purge fraction. The other local design variables such as number of trays are obtained using well established heuristics. The dominant design variables are optimized to obtain the steady state economic optimum design of the RD HDS process. Classic economic tradeoffs are observed in the optimization, which are described in detail. A comparison with a conventional HDS process shows that the RD process is about 30% cheaper than the conventional process in terms of the total annualized cost. A simple decentralized plantwide control system with a two point temperature controller in the RD column is synthesized for the process. It is found to effectively handle large throughput changes and changes in the naphtha / H2 fresh feed composition. The RD HDS process is thus a promising alternative to conventional HDS processes