CPE 6210 INTRODUCTION TO WORKSHOP SESSIONS

Site Location and Layout

A new ethylene oxide production plant is to be constructed on the East coast of Japan, in the
location as shown in Figure 1.

New ethylene oxide

production plant

Figure 1 Site Location for new Ethylene Oxide Plant

Ethylene oxide is produced by reacting ethylene with air using a silver oxide catalyst.

The plant will import ethylene by ship and will manufacture 100,000 te/yr of ethylene oxide. A
ship will make a weekly delivery of 2,000 te of cryogenic ethylene. The ethylene will be
transferred into onsite storage which consists of 2 x 2,000 te capacity cryogenic atmospheric
storage tanks.

80% of the product will be converted directly to ethylene glycol by reacting ethylene oxide with
water. The ethylene glycol will be stored on site in 2 x 2,000 te capacity atmospheric storage
tanks and from there it will be exported by ship which visits the site once a week.

The remainder of the ethylene oxide will be stored in 3 x 100te horizontal storage vessels and
from there it will be exported by road tanker (each 20te capacity) to a bottling plant, located
70 km to the South of the main site where the product will be bottled and sold as a sterilising
agent.

The layout of the main production site is shown in Figure 2. The total insured value of the site
is $300million and makes an annual profit of $30million.

Ethylene
Glycol
Site Jetty
Maintenance Ethylene
Boundary
Workshop Jetty

Tanker
Loading
Bay Ethylene
Ethylene Glycol
Oxide Storage
Storage Ethylene
Storage
100
Control
m Room

Distillation Reactor

Ethylene Oxide
Production
Ethylene
Glycol
Production

Figure 2 – Main Production Site Layout

Manning Levels

The normal manning levels are as follows:

Location Number Present Day Number Present Night

Control Room
Maintenance Workshop
Outside on EO production unit
Outside on Glycol production unit
Outside in EO storage area
Outside in ethylene storage area
Outside in glycol storage area
EO road loading during loading
Ethylene and Glycol Jetties during
loading/offloading
*Road loading only occurs during daytime
20 6
20 3
7 3
4 2
1 1
1 1
1 0
1 0*
2 2

 The outside operators for EO (“EO Workers” - EW) and glycol (“Glycol Workers” - GW)
production units are dedicated for their respective areas.
 A single team (“Offsites Workers” - OW) is responsible for all other outdoor activities. The
team consists of three people during the day and two at night. When loading is not
taking place they will spend their time in the storage areas as shown above. When
loading operations take place a single team member will supervise each operation.
 All operators work on a shift system with alternating days and nights.
 During ship loading, which can take place day or night, in addition to the presence of the
2 outside operators on the jetty, there are also 4 members of the ship’s crew on board
the ship.
 All operators work a 42 hour week.
 The control room is a single story concrete framed building with brick infill and a concrete
roof.
 The single storey maintenance workshop is steel framed and steel clad.
 A road tanker takes 30 minutes to fill.
 An ethylene or glycol ship takes 12 hours to load/offload.

A town of population 10,000 is located to the East of the facility at a distance of 300m from the
site boundary. 10% of the population will be outdoors on average during the day and 1%
outdoors at night.
Process Technology

Ethylene Oxide:

C2 H4 + 0.5 O2→ CH2 .O.CH2

• Ethylene to air ratio: 50% LFL
• Side reaction products: CO2 , H2O
• Catalyst: Silver oxide on alumina
• Operating temperature and pressure: 250 – 300°C and 120 – 300 psi
• Supressing agent for side reactions: Ethylene dichloride
• Reaction is exothermic

Ethylene Glycol:

CH2.O.CH2 + H20 → CH2OH.CH2OH

• Reaction is exothermic

Figure 3 shows the process flow diagram for the ethylene oxide production unit.

Figure 3 – PFD for ethylene oxide production.

 Ethylene is vaporised using steam heating. Air and ethylene are then separately
compressed and, along with a recycle stream, are sent to the shell and tube reactor.
 The reactor is fed on the shell side with Dowtherm fluid that serves to maintain the
reaction temperature. Dowtherm fluid is a heat transfer fluid, which is a mixture of two
very stable compounds, biphenyl and diphenyl oxide.
 The hot Dowtherm fluid from the reactor is sent to a waste heat recovery boiler to
generate steam.
  The vapour stream is cooled using an integrated heat exchanger using the unreacted
vapour stream generated from an absorber.
 The vapour stream is sent to the heat integrated exchanger and is then sent back to the
reactor and a fraction of that is purged to eliminate the accumulation of inerts such as
Nitrogen and Argon.
 The product vapours are compressed and sent to a water absorber which absorbs
ethylene oxide from the feed vapours. Eventually, the ethylene oxide rich water stream is
sent to a stripper which desorbs the ethylene oxide + water as vapour and generates the
regenerated water as bottom product. The regenerated water reaches the absorber
through a heat integrated exchanger.
 The ethylene oxide + water vapour mixture is compressed (to about 4 - 5 barg) and then
sent to a stripper to generate light ends + H2O as a top product and the bottom product
is then sent to another fractionators to produce ethylene oxide as top product. The
heavy ends are obtained as bottom product.
 The inventory of Ethylene Oxide is 1,000 kg in the reaction section and 20,000 kg in the
distillation section.

Further information is given at http://nptel.ac.in/courses/103103029/17

Reactor Feed System

Figure 4 shows in more detail the system which supplies ethylene vapour and air to the
reactor. Liquid ethylene is fed by an electrically driven pump from the cryogenic storage vessel
to an evaporator under level control. Vapour is produced under pressure control by means of
a steam supply. The air supply is set by a flow ratio controller (FR c) which maintains the
ethylene concentration to the reactor below the explosive limit for ethylene in air.

In the event of a loss of control:

 the maximum steam flowrate can exceed the capacity of the air blower to maintain the
correct reactor concentration
 the maximum pump flowrate exceeds the capacity of the steam system to vaporise all of
the liquid

Protection is by means of the emergency shut down system (ESD) which monitors the output
ethylene concentration and shuts off the ethylene supply in the event that the concentration
moves close to the explosive region.
 Air intake

Reactor
cooling
Liquid ethylene from
circuit
storage

Figure 4 Reactor Feed System

Ethylene Oxide Storage

The PFD for the ethylene oxide storage is shown in Figure 5. The normal operating pressure of
the storage vessels is 0.7barg and their design pressure is 5barg. All vents lines are routed to an
elevated discharge point.

Vent Purge
line PI1 line
LI1
V104 V103 V101

T101

Vent PI2 Purge

From
LI2 line line
V204 V203 production
V102 V201

T201
To road
loading V5 Vent Purge
pump line PI3 line
LI3
V202 V304 V303
V301

T301

V302
Figure 5 Ethylene Oxide Storage.