Plant design Project on

Production of Ethyl Benzene by Mobil-Badger Method

Session 2013-2017

Supervised by:
Prof. Dr. Ing-Naveed Ramzan
Haseeb ullah Khan Jatoi

Submitted By:
Hafiz Adil Bashir

2013-CH-24

Usman Ahmed

2013-CH-62

Maavia Zubair

2013-CH-80

Ahsan Raza

2013-CH-60

Department of Chemical Engineering

University of Engineering and Technology Lahore

Production of Ethyl-Benzene by Mobil-Badger Process

Introduction
Ethyl-benzene is also known as PHENYL-ETHANE. It is a mono-cyclic aromatic hydrocarbon
because it contains only one aromatic ring. It is a colorless aromatic hydrocarbon. It is highly
flammable liquid and odor similar to that of gasoline with a melting point of -95 0C and boiling
point of 1360C.

Applications
It is widely used in petrochemical industries such as:

Anti-knocking agent in gasoline

Intermediate for production of polystyrene

It is also used for:

Synthetic rubber
Pesticides
Inks
Paints
Recovery of Natural Gas etc.

Process Selection
There are three main processes for the production of Ethyl-Benzene namely:

Mobil-Badger
Alkar process
AlCl3 based process

Alkar process and AlCl3 processes does not give such high impurity as that of mobil-badger
process. The catalysts being used in these methods are dangerous for humen health and difficult
to handle. Moreover, these processes are not environment friendly.
But the best process is Mobil-Badger because:

It produces the high quality product i.e. 99.5% pure.

Catalyst handling is easy.
Environment friendly

Process Description
Mobil-Badger process is used for the preparation of Ethyl-benzene by Ethylene and Benzene
under the action of Zeolite catalyst at appropriate conditions of temperature and pressure. It
comprises of two major steps as follow:

Alkylation
Separation

Alkylation:
This process takes place in alkylation reactor which is maintained in liquid phase
because of its improved energy efficiency. This reactor operates adiabatically and ethylene
conversion is essentially 100%. It operates at 350-4500C and at a pressure of 2-3MPa under action
of ZSM-5 catalyst. Ethylene and benzene enters the furnace at 247 0C and leaves at 420 0C and
reacts in the reactor to form Ethyl-benzene product and Diethyl-benzene, polyethyl-benzene byproducts. Following is the main reaction taking place in the reactor:
C2H4

+ C6H6

Ethylene

Benzene

C6H5(C2H5)
Ethyl-Benzene

Side reactions are as follows:

2C2H4

Ethylene
3C2H4
Ethylene

C6H6
Benzene

C6H6
Benzene

C6H4(C2H5)2
Diethyl-Benzene
C6H3(C2H5)3
Polyethyl-Benzene

From reactor the product stream enters to the heat exchanger where it is cooled from 380 to 2000C.
After which Flash drum separates the vapor and liquid streams. The gases from flash drum are
removed while liquid stream is sent to the distillation unit for separation.
Separation:
There are three distillation column in the process where separation takes place. The
1st column is the benzene column because it recycles the unreacted benzene back into the reactor
while the 2nd column is called ethyl-benzene column because ethyl-benzene is separated from the
by-products and inert. In 3rd distillation column PEB is recovered and removed as residue stream
and is used as fuel. The product is 99.5% pure.

Process Flow Diagram

Equipments
Following equipments are used in process:

Reactor
Furnace
Heat exchanger
Pump
Distillation column
Flash drum

Capacity
The capacity of our plant for Ethyl-Benzene production will be 50000 ton/y as per need of
our country.

Material and energy balance algorithm

Material balance around following equipments will be done sequentially as:

Reactor

Flash Drum

Distillation
Column

Then energy balance will be done around

Furnace

Reactor

Heat
Exchanger

Distillation
Column