Significant cost and energy savings opportunities in industrial three phase reactor for phenol oxidation

• Published in: Computers & chemical engineering Vol. 104; pp. 201 - 210
• Main Authors: Mohammed, Awad E., Jarullah, Aysar T., Gheni, Saba A., Mujtaba, Iqbal M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 02-09-2017
• Subjects: CWAO; Energy recovery; Modelling; Optimisation; Phenol; Trickle bed reactor; Energy recovery; Phenol; Modelling; Trickle bed reactor; Optimisation; CWAO
• ISSN: 0098-1354; 1873-4375
• DOI: 10.1016/j.compchemeng.2017.04.016

•Energy recovery of a large scale catalytic wet air oxidation of phenol is studied.•External energy consumption is minimised while maximizing the overall profit of the process.•The economic analysis of the process with and without energy recovery is considered.•The process significantly reduces the carbon footprint with energy recovery option.
Energy saving is an important consideration in process design for low cost sustainable production with reduced environmental impacts (carbon footprint). In our earlier laboratory scale pilot plant study of catalytic wet air oxidation (CWAO) of phenol (a typical compound found in wastewater), the energy recovery was not an issue due to small amount of energy usage. However, this cannot be ignored for a large scale reactor operating around 140–160°C due to high total energy requirement. In this work, energy savings in a large scale CWAO process is explored. The hot and cold streams of the process are paired up using 3 heat exchangers recovering significant amount of energy from the hot streams to be re-used in the process leading to over 40% less external energy consumption. In addition, overall cost (capital and operating) savings of the proposed process is more than 20% compared to that without energy recovery option.