Journal of Energy Technologies and Policy www.iiste.org ISSN 2224-3232 (Paper) ISSN 2225-0573 (Online) Vol.8, No.6, 2018 33 Computer Aided Design of Fluidized Bed Reactor for the Production of Polypropylene Dagde, Kenneth K. Shadrach, Chinomeakpam N. Department of Chemical/Petrochemical Engineering, Rivers State University, P. O. Box 5080, Nkpolu-Oroworokwo, Port Harcourt, River State, Nigeria Abstract Fluidized bed reactor (FBR) are the most preferred reaction vessels for reactions involving gas-liquid-solid interaction as they have excellent mass transfer characteristics and exceptional heat distribution system. The fluidized bed consist of two regions: bubble and emulsion phases with an interchange coefficient for transfer of gas between regions. The computation and design of fluidized bed for the production of polypropylene was presented. Three configurations were considered for the plug flow – plug flow configuration, plug flow – mixed flow configuration and mixed flow – mixed flow configuration for the bubble and emulsion phases respectively to investigate the best configuration for highest yield of polypropylene. A computer software (ASPEN HYSIS) was used for the design the three FBR configurations. Results obtained indicated that the plug flow – plug flow configuration produced the highest yield of 51.6mole percent while the plug flow – mixed flow mode had 46.02mole percent and the mixed flow – mixed flow mode produced the lowest yield of 45.19mole percent. However, the mixed flow – mixed flow mode utilized the lowest operating temperature of 194F while the plug flow – mixed flow and plug flow – plug flow modes utilized 202F and 320F respectively, indicating that the mixed flow – mixed flow mode temperature matched plant data for 90 o C (194F). The design capacity of the fluidized bed reactor (FBR) is 4813 barrel/day, 4791 barrel/day and 4639barrel/day for PFR/PFR, PFR/CSTR and CSTR/CSTR configurations respectively. Keywords: Fluidized Bed Reactor, Polypropylene, Design, Aspen-Hysis, CSTR, PFR, Operating Temperature 1.Introduction Polypropylene is considered as one of the important polymer products that has started to grow in a wide range among other plastics. The reason is that several materials such as steel, wood, glass, paper and other metals can be replaced by polypropylene from the point of effective cost and performance. Also, the application of polypropylene can be found from household furniture, carpets, packaging containers to pipes, automobile parts and many other products that we even cannot imagine. Polypropylene was discovered by Paul Hogan and Robert L. Banks in 1951, in an attempt to make dimers and trimmers of ethylene and propylene with a chromium oxide catalyst for gasoline use. They accidentally produce some crystalline polypropylene and linear polypropylene. The process was planted by Philips petroleum at the beginning of 1953 (Morris, 2005). The first commercial production of polypropylene began in USA in 1957 then followed by Europe in 1958. Since the 1980s and until nowadays after passage of some 60 years from Natta and Ziegler invention, polypropylene production, consumption and application have increased and became the first common large volume among the group of thermoplastic industries used all over the world.(Moore, 1996). In general, polymerisation of polypropylene is done by contacting propylene and Ziegler-Natta catalyst. Metallocene can be used instead of Ziegler Natta catalyst (Corradini et al, 2004). The chemical structure of polypropylene represents by the tacticity which is formed by different way, it depends on how the substituents are arranged on the polymer backbone. So polypropylene can be isotactic, actactic or syndiotactic (Paul & Robert, 1989). Polypropylene is classified into three major types: homopolymer, random copolymer, and impact copolymer. Propylene monomers are used to make homopolymer while in random and impact copolymer ethylene and propylene are used (Shariati, 1996; Gooch, 2007). The need to increase the production of polypropylene has been the headache to chemical petrochemical engineers in Nigeria over the years because of the increasing population which directly means a higher demand for the polypropylene product. This research is timely because of the diverse applications to which the petrochemical products are being put and especially because of the demand of such products. From available data, it is seen that the total amount of polypropylene product in 1995 was 2,061 tons; 1996 was 13,129 tons, 1997 was 15,497 tons and 2012 was 140,000 tons (Khan et al., 2016; Zheng et al., 2010). Hence this study will enable us to meet up with rising demand so as to curb the problem of the lack of polypropylene which might rise in the next few years. Therefore the focus of this research is designing a fluidised bed reactor for the production of polypropylene, due to its uniform particle mixing, uniform temperature gradients and ability to operates reactor in continuous state. The designing of this reactor incorporates the chemical engineering principles which include the material and energy balances, rate kinetics, reactor model assumptions, determination of space velocity, space time, and voidage. This design accounts for the chemical processes of polypropylene production, heat generation per unit brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by International Institute for Science, Technology and Education (IISTE): E-Journals