Abstract:

Increasing the stages of methanol aromatization reactor can significantly improve the aromatics yield. However, it remains inconclusive whether the increase in reactor stages is benefit to the whole methanol to aromatics (MTA) process. Based on four cases with different reactor stages including a single-stage, a two-stage and two three-stage reactors, this work conducted full-flow simulation for MTA process. In this paper, energy analysis and techno-economic analysis were performed for the four cases, aiming to explore the effect of reactor stages on the whole MTA process. The results showed that the aromatics yield in the three-stage reactor cases were as 180.74% and 163.72% as that in the single-stage and two-stage reactor cases, respectively. In terms of energy consumption, compared to the single-stage reactor-based case, the two-stage and three-stage reactor cases led to lower value. The economic analysis indicated that increasing the reactor stages resulted in higher total capital investment and total annual production cost, but much faster investment return could be gotten, showing increasing profitability.

Key words: methanol to aromatics, reactor stages, aromatics yield, energy analysis, economic analysis

摘要：

通过改变反应器的级数可以显著提高甲醇转化过程的芳烃收率，但这种改变能否进一步改善整个流程的性能还有待研究。本文基于4种不同级数的反应器（包括单级、二级和两种三级反应器），对甲醇制芳烃过程进行了全流程模拟。基于此，本文对这4种情形进行了能耗分析和经济分析，旨在探究不同级数反应器对整个甲醇制芳烃流程的影响。结果显示三级反应器流程显著提高了甲醇制芳烃过程的芳烃产率，约为单级和二级反应器流程的180.74%和163.72%。能耗分析的结果表明相比于单级流程，多级流程在提高芳烃产率的同时也能降低流程的总能耗。而经济分析的结果表明，反应器级数的增加虽然会提高流程的总投资费用和年度总生产费用，但会极大地缩短投资回收期，从而增加流程的收益潜力。

关键词: 甲醇制芳烃, 反应器级数, 芳烃产率, 能耗分析, 经济分析