NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering

DESIGN PROJECT STATEMENT:

For Academic Year 2016-17

OVERVIEW
Engineering design is an art that involves a creative and sound application of fundamental
principles of science and engineering to produce a safe, practical, and cost-effective
solution useful to the society. Holistic design experience is an essential part of any
engineering education including Chemical Engineering.
The final year design project aims to impart such a holistic experience in the Chemical
Engineering curriculum, where the students get an opportunity to carry out the major steps
involved in the design and evaluation of a new chemical manufacturing process or product.
They develop and evaluate alternatives, perform rigorous simulation, size and optimize
various processing units, analyse hazards and safety, develop schemes for control,
estimate capital and operating costs, and finally assess project profitability. In other words,
the design project serves as the capstone design course where students finally apply all
their acquired knowledge and skills from previous years in an integrated fashion on a
realistic, open-ended problem related to chemical manufacturing process or new product.
To facilitate the above described final goal, you are receiving the following statement on
the design project that you will eventually execute in your final year. The project is
designed to serve as a central theme around which the learning outcomes of various
modules can revolve. Lecturers of core modules may give you small, well-focused tasks
such as tutorial problems, assignments, reviews and/or mini-projects related to the design
problem given below. You can also self-study at your own pace to learn more on the
design problem. Such an integrated learning experience over several years highlights the
importance and relation of core modules to the design project. Further, we hope that you
will be better prepared for the design project and also learn how to solve open-ended
problems by making critical design decisions with sound scientific justification and giving
due consideration to cost and safety.

DESIGN BRIEF
Until recently, the majority of light olefins were produced by the petrochemical industry from
either pyrolysis (steam cracking) or fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) of naphtha. The recent
increase in oil prices has, however, revived a strong interest in the production of light
olefins from low cost non-petroleum sources such as methanol. Several manufacturing
companies are currently involved in producing olefins from methanol using the UOP/Hydro
methanol to olefin (MTO) technology.
You will design a plant to produce 300,000 metric tons per year of ethylene and propylene
(of 99 mol% purity), starting from methanol. The process consists of two main parts: 1)
reaction and 2) gas separation. Assume that the plant is to be located in Singapore and the
operation time is 8000 h/yr.
The values given above are representative, and can vary in the design project which you
will do in Semester 2 of your final year (i.e., academic year 2016-17).

PROCESS
The UOP/Hydro MTO process utilizes a fluidized bed-regenerator system to convert
methanol to olefins. The reactor operates in vapor phase at 350 to 600C and 1 to 6 bar.
The process utilises a fluidised-bed reactor with a fluidised-bed regenerator owing to the
high heat of reaction and for frequent regeneration of catalyst. In the regenerator, coke is
burned off the catalyst and steam generation removes the heat of combustion.
The reactor effluent is cooled and passed through a caustic scrubber followed by a dryer to
remove carbon dioxide and water. Products (ethylene and propylene) are then recovered
using a demethaniser, deethaniser, depropaniser, C2 splitter and C3 splitter.

REFERENCES
1. Kvisle, S., Fuglerud, T., Kolboe, S., Olsbye, U., Lillerud, K.P. and Vora, B.V. Methanolto-Hydrocarbons. Handbook of Heterogeneous Catalysis. Part 13:13.14:2950-2965, 2008.
2. Funk, G.A., Myers, M., and Vora, B. A Different Game Plan. Hydrocarbon Engineering.
Dec, 2013.
3. Turton R., Bailie R.C., Whiting W.B. and Shaeiwitz J.A., Bhattacharyya D., Analysis,
Synthesis, and Design of Chemical Processes, Prentice Hall, 4th Edition, 2013 (TP155.7).