Process Design, Simulation, and Economic Evaluation of Diethyl Ether (DEE) Production Process

Production and utilization of renewable fuels for transportation is essential for a sustainable energy perspective of Iran, as well as the rest of the world. In the transportation sector, ethanol produced from natural gas has been promising as a future fuel for spark-ignition engines because of its high-octane value. Ethanol, however, is not a high-quality fuel for compression-ignition engines. Ethanol can be easily converted through a dehydration process to produce diethyl ether (DEE), which conversely is an excellent fuel in that regard with a higher energy density than ethanol. In this study, first the diethyl ether (DEE) production process is designed, and then simulated in Aspen HYSYS software environment. The main purpose of this study is the economic evaluation of the process to obtain total capital cost, net profit, rate of return (ROR), and payoff period (POP). The economic evaluation results showed that in the DEE production, the equipment cost is ۰.۷۵ million USD, the total capital cost is ۳.۶ million USD, the net profit is ۲.۳ million USD per year, the ROR is ۷۳% and the and the POP is ۱.۳ years.

Keywords:

Process Design , Simulation , Economic evaluation , diethyl ether.