Ethylene oxide ethylene glycol process flow diagram

The modern ethylene oxide/ethylene glycols plants are highly integrated units where ethylene oxide from the ethylene oxide reaction system can be recovered as glycols with a co-product of purified ethylene oxide if desired. The integration allows for a significant utilities savings as well as the recovery of all bleed streams as high grade product, which would otherwise have been recovered as a lesser grade product. The integrated plant recovers all MEG as fibergrade product and ethylene oxide product as low aldehyde product. The overall recovery of the ethylene oxide from the reaction system is 99.7% with only a small loss as heavy glycol residue.

Ethylene oxide ethylene glycol process diagram

Ethylene and oxygen in a diluent gas made up of a mixture of mainly methane or nitrogen along with carbon dioxide and argon are fed to a multi-tubular catalytic reactor (1). The temperature of reaction is controlled by adjusting the pressure of the steam which is generated in the shell side of the reactor, and removes the heat of reaction. The ethylene oxide (EO) produced is removed from the reaction gas by scrubbing with water in a Scrubber after heat exchange with the circulating reactor feed gas. The by-product CO2 is removed from the scrubbed reaction gas in a CO2 removal system (3,4) before it is recompressed and returned to the reaction system where ethylene and oxygen concentrations are restored before returning to the reactor. The ethylene oxide is steam-stripped (5) from the scrubbing solution and recovered as a more concentrated water solution (6) that is suitable for use in a EO purification system (7) or as feed to a glycol plant. The Stripped water solution is cooled and returned to the Scrubber for reuse. The glycol plant feed along with any high aldehyde EO bleeds from the EO purification section are sent to a glycol reactor (9) and then to a multi-effect evaporation train (10,11,12) for removal of the bulk of the water from the glycols. The glycol is then dried (13) and the passes to the glycol distillation train (14,15,16) where the MEG, DEG, TEG products are recovered. Yields: The ethylene yield for that portion of the production going to purified EO is 1.31 kg of EO product / kg of ethylene. The yield to glycol is 1.81 kg of glycols per kg of ethylene. Product Quality: When ethylene oxide is produced as a co-product the EO meets low aldehyde specification requirement of 10 ppm aldehyde maximum that is required by most derivative units. Glycol product qualities have set the standard for the industry.