EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1) Project Summary
This report highlights the design of a styrene monomer plant using benzene and
ethylene as the raw materials to produce 150 290 MT/year of styrene with 99.7%
purity. The main processes involved are alkylation of ethylene and benzene to
ethylbenzene, and dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene to styrene. This project starts
with a critical literature review about the styrene market, followed by research and
evaluation on available and alternative process routes to produce styrene, possible
plant location, safety considerations in plant setup, conceptual design with heat
recovery and process control, waste treatment and management methods, as well as
economic evaluation. Aspen HYSYS and Microsoft Visio were used as designing
tools to construct the Plant Layout, detailed Process Flow Diagram (PFD) and
Process and instrumentation Diagram (P&ID).

2) Mass Balance Highlights

The following tables summarize the input and output mass balance of the styrene
monomer plant:

Component Initial Feed Feed Purity Final Output Product

flow (kg/hr) (wt%) (kg/hr) Purity (wt%)
Benzene
Ethylene
Ethylbenzene
Diethylbenzen
e
Total
Table 1: Alkylation Feed and Product

Component Initial Feed Feed Purity Final Output Product

flow (kg/hr) (wt%) (kg/hr) Purity (wt%)
Ethylbenzene
Diethylbenzen
e
Benzene
Water
Styrene
Hydrogen
Toluene
Methane
Total
 Table 2: Dehydrogenation Feed and Product

The molar flow of styrene produced is . kg/hr, resulting to a . yield of ethylene

to styrene.

3) Heat Integration
After heat integration, a total of 2 coolers are used to the design and only 4 units of
heat exchangers are required.

Table 3: Heat Integration Summary

Total Heat Flow After Heat Integration 94057
(kW)
Total Heat Flow Before Heat Integration 98438.87
(kW)
Heat Recovered (kW) 4381.87
Percentage Heat Recovery (%) 4.65

The ability to reduce heat load requirement by 4.65% allows the reduction of cost,
especially in heat exchanger area, cost and utility cost reduction.

4) Equipment Highlights
Equipment used in this plant can be divided into two which are major and minor
equipment. The major equipment include distillation column, reactor, fractionating
column, three phase separator and steam boiler. The main process happens in the
reactors. There are a total of 3 reactors which are alkylator, transkylator and
dehydrogenation reactor. All the reactors use fixed bed reactor. Alkylator is the first
stage of alkylation process to produce ethylbenzene from benzene and ethylene while
the transkylator is the reactor where the recycled benzene is supplied back to the
alkylation reaction where in this transkylator, diethylbenzene is produced.
Dehydrogenation reactor is where the dehydrogenation process happened between
steam and ethylbenzene to produce Styrene.

Moreover, a three phase reactor is used to separate water, Styrene and hydrogen
while a steam boiler is used to heat up the steam for dehydrogenation process. There
are two distillation columns used in this proposed plant design. The distillation
columns are Benzene distillation column with column pressure 50kPa which
functions to recover the Benzene to be recycled back in the alkylation process and
Ethylbenzene distillation column with column pressure 30kPa which functions to
recover Ethylbenzene to be used in the dehydrogenation process. Fractionating
column with column pressure 70 80 kPa is a column where the final separation of
Styrene occurs. The equipment that are considered minor are flash drum, pump,
compressor and heat exchanger. Flash drum is used to separate the benzene from flue
gas while the heat exchanger is used to provide heating and cooling to the system.
The function of compressor and pump is quite similar which is to control the pressure
of the system.

5) Utilities
The styrene monomer plant is targeted to obtain most utilities from outside source,
namly water from Syarikat Bekalan Air Sdn Bhd and electricity at TNB Paka Power
Station. Natural gas will be obtained from Petronas Gas Berhad (PGB), while steam
and cooling water utilities will be generated in a utility plant within the styrene
monomer plant. The utilities cost is $507,418.41 per year. \

6) Instrumentation And Control

To achieve production rate, having process control for each equipment is essential to
maintain the desired temperature, pressure, flowrate and other control parameters.
Control strategies which are ratio controller, feedback controller, feedforward
controller and cascade are used and applied in the operation of each equipment.

7) Waste Treatment
Liquid and gas wastes are identified to be produced in the styrene monomer plant.
The liquid waste (condensate water) will be treated in a wastewater treatment unit
through primary, secondary and tertiary treatment. The gaseous waste (ethane,
methane and toluene) will be re-used for furnace operation while hydrogen gas will
undergo a purification process to be a viable product in the market.
8) Economic Evaluation And Costs
The project is proven to be economically feasible and attractive, and definitely
worthy of investment as it is highly profitable and gives a high rate of return, as
illustrated in the table below:

Table 4: Summary of economic evaluation

Total Capital Investment (RM)

Total Operating Cost (RM/year)

Revenue from Sales (RM/year)
Rate of Return (ROR) 26.71% (> 10% MARR)
Payback Period 8 years
Net Profit after 15 years operation (RM)

9) Plant Location
Kerteh, Terengganu is chosen as the styrene monomer plant location as raw materials
can be easily obtained within 100 km radius. There is sufficient nearby market for
selling products and by-products, with no market competitors. Energy supply such as
electricity and fuel is sufficient and can be obtained easily, while there are also
complete and well-developed air, water, road, rail and piping network within the
location. Apart from that, there are sufficient recruitment agencies nearby that are
able to provide skilled and suitable manpower. The location has excelled public
amnesties and poses no hazard risk to population. The land price is less expensive
and reasonable.

10) Plant Layout

See attachment

11) Process Flow Diagram (PFD)

See attachment

12) Piping And Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID)

See attachment