Name / Matric. No.

: Eric Chia Wei Cong / U1622265L

Ng Qin Ye Edwin / U1621859K

Tian Jun Hua / U1621842L

Tutorial Group : C31

 Figure 1: Case Diagram

1. What are the final compositions of the vapour and liquid products?

Components Vapour Product Liquid Product

Composition Composition

Toluene 0.0008 0.2235

Benzene 0.0073 0.7096

Methane 0.6429 0.0531

Hydrogen 0.3491 0.0030

Biphenyl 0 0.0108
2. For this set of reactions, how can the selectivity of benzene be increased?

Please answer theoretically.

The current reaction occurs at high temperature at around 680 degree Celsius, the

hydrodealkylation reaction is highly exothermic but the side reaction which reduces

the selectivity of our benzene is endothermic. In order to increase the selectivity of

benzene, we need to lower the reaction temperature at the same time maintain the

high conversion, this can be done through the addition of catalyst. Since

endothermic reaction rate increases as temperature increases, as we lowers the

temperature the reaction rate will be lowered, therefore, less benzene will be

converted to biphenyl and the selectivity of benzene will increase.

3. What are the roles of excess H2 and CH4 in this set of reactions?

Since the hydrodealkylation reaction is highly exothermic and the reaction

temperature is above 500 degree Celsius, direct cooling is needed. Excess inert gas

and reactant is needed for direct cooling. Hydrogen act as both excess inert and

reactant and excess methane gas act as inert gas for direct cooling.

4. What separation process do you recommend to obtain high purity benzene

product?

Vapor product contains only a small fraction of benzene (0.0073 mole fraction)

whereas the Liquid product contains a large fraction of benzene (0.7096 mole

fraction). Therefore, we will focus on recovering higher purity benzene from the liquid

product as compared to the vapor product.

The liquid product consists mostly of benzene and toluene while the rest of the

components are present in traces quantity and hence, we will need to separate
Benzene from toluene. Based on literature, it is noted that both benzene and toluene

will form a miscible mixture and hence, the dominant separation process for liquid

will be distillation. From HYSYS, the boiling point of toluene is 110.6 °C whereas the

boiling point of benzene is 80.09°C. There is a large difference in boiling point

between the two and hence, distillation will be a viable option for obtaining higher

purity of benzene product.

Appendices

Figure 2 Solvent Miscibility Table. [1]

https://www.csustan.edu/sites/default/files/groups/Chemistry/Drake/documents/solvent_

miscibility_table.pdf