Dynamic Modeling and Optimization of a Typical Styrene Tubular Catalytic Reactor

The common reaction pathway for styrene synthesis is the catalytic dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene (EB). The investment cost of styrene plant is very high, and even a small enhancement in the plantoperation can generate major income. In this paper, the styrene tubular catalytic reactor has been modeledby passing a gaseous mixture of ethyl benzene and steam through the reactor. By applying numericalmethod of generated partial differential equations, the value of conversion percent and temperature againstlength of reactor was found in different times and the validity of model was checked by typical plant data.Finally, the optimization was carried out to maximize the conversion percent as the objective function.

Keywords:

Dehydrogenation , Ethyl benzene , Mathematical modeling , Styrene , Optimization