Modeling and Simulation a Catalytic Fixed Bed Reactor to Produce Ethyl Benzene from Ethanol

Ethyl benzene used increasingly each year is the raw material of producing styrene monomer. This substanceis produced from benzene alkylation with ethylene or ethanol, depending on the availability and cost of rawmaterials. In this study benzene alkylation in the presence of ethanol in a catalytic fixed bed reactor inthree states of isotherm, adiabatic and non-isotherm-non-adiabatic is mathematically modeled with onedimensionalpseudo- homogeneous model; and then has been programmed with math lab software. Thereaction kinetics model is used in this study which comes from the experimental equations found by Mr.U.S Ridevi et al. in a zeolite catalyst impregnated with AlCl۳ obtained in isotherm mode. The results of thissimulation in isotherm state are comparable with experimental data. The adiabatic and non-isotherm-nonadiabaticstates also show acceptable results. Furthermore, in this study the effect of various factors such asthe feed flow rate, substrate temperature, substrate density, fixed and variable heat capacity and viscosity offluid has been investigated.

Keywords:

Fixed Bed Reactor , Ethyl Benzene , Modeling , Simulation , Ethanol , catalyst