BEST METHOD OF ACETONE PRODUCTION

A feasibility study is being carried out here to select the best method to produce acetone . A feasibility study is an evaluation of a proposal designed to determine the difficulty in carrying out a designated task. The worldwide production capacity of acetone in 2010 was estimated at about 6.7 million tons per year . united states has the highest production capacity of 1.56 million tons per year . more than 90% of the U.S acetone is produced as a result of hydrolysis of cumene hydroperoxide . although 0.62 pound of acetone is produced per pound of phenol but the acetone is not a major and required product here in cumene process , so consideration will be done on this aspect .

WORN OUT METHODS

Older methods includes the production of acetone by the dry distillation of the acetates mainly calcium acetate resulting in low yields too . The another method used during world war 1 was acetone production using acetone-butanol-ethanol fermentation with Clostridium acetobutylicum bacteria which was developed by the first president of Israel to help British war effort . This process is also abandoned due to smaller yields . The current major processes today employing acetone production are : y y y y Cumene method Wacker-Hoechst process Oxidation of 2-propanol Acetic acid method

1. CUMENE METHOD
83% of the acetone is approximately produced by this method but it is tied to phenol production . In the cumene process, benzene is alkylated with propylene to produce cumene, which is oxidized by air to produce phenol and acetone .

The overall yield of the process is 97.7%, it is close to the best theoretically attainable performance. Researchers are working on it to increase the process yield. New improvements to the overall design include a high efficiency energy integration system and a large number of environmental hazards control systems. The production of acetone with the help of cumene is

not a normal process as compared to other acetone production processes. Basically this is a phenol production plant and acetone is the major by-product here. The market demands of phenol are very high and acetone as major by-product can be used to meet the market requirement from this process. So a person who have budget to operate a single plant, he must try to develop a phenol plant from cumene process because in phenol plant he may get the two major products. There is no need to build any separate plant in the country like Pakistan where electricity is the major issue to operate the plants. considering all this , this process gives a good acetone yield but as a by-product along with phenol .

2 . OXIDATION OF 2-PROPANOL
There are two ways to produce acetone from isopropyl alcohol :

2 . 1 OXIDATION OF SECONDARY ALCOHOL USING YEAST

This process is not suitable for acetone production because to produce yeast, used for this process is, is a very time taken process and in addition to that a lot amount of yeast is required to produce small amount of acetone. The cost estimation also tell us that the production of acetone using yeast from methane is not a suitable and economical process.

2 . 2 CATALYTIC OXIDATION OF SECONDARY ALCOHOL USING PLATINUM OR PALLADIUM

As compare to the above process this process can be adopted for industrial production but this process costs a little more than the CUMENE process as : y y y Catalyst used in this process are expensive Catalyst is of very small life. And a huge amount of catalyst is required for acetone production. Ratio is 10- 20 % of the substance to be catalyzed.

Still operating at a higher costs , this process moves head to head with cumene process .

3 . WACKER-HOECHST PROCESS
The invention of Wacker process is a great success in a common sense . In Japan the second most important process for acetone production is the direct oxidation of propylene with a 12% share. Here the oxidation technique is used for the propylene in the presence of palladium chloride and copper chloride .The conversion of propylene is more than 99% .As in the acetaldehyde process, this can be carried out commercially in either a single-step or a two-step

process .The latter is economically more favorable because a propylene/propane mixture (made by petroleum cracking) can be directly used as the feedstock. The propylene oxidation and the catalyst regeneration takes place at same conditions i-e between 900 and 1200C , and at low pressure 0.9 and 1.2 . 106 Pa absolute . The PH of the catalyst solution is kept between 1 and 2 and it contains palladium chloride 100 times more by weight as compared to cupric chloride . In these conditions the single pass conversion reaches to 98 to 99 % and the yield is 92 to 94 mole % . One of the advantages of the process of direct oxidation using palladium chloride as a homogeneous liquid phase catalyst is that the feed stocks used can be a mixture of olefins and
5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 Series 1 Series 2

saturated hydrocarbons without prior separation and also high purity products are obtained . Also the life of the palladium chloride / cupric chloride catalyst solution is virtually unlimited because the deactivation due to poisoning is not functioned in homogeneous catalysis .

4 . ACETIC ACID PROCESS

As acetic acid is the major raw material so its availability is an important factor to be considered. y y y y China has largest capacity of acetic acid production which is 44%; Asia has 21%, United States 19% Western Europe 6%.

In consumption y y y y China consumes 30% of total demand. Asia 27%. United States 20%. Western Europe 14%.

These regions totaled over 90% of global acetic acid consumption. The average efficiency of this process is 85% and the quality of acetone meets the commercial specifications. Difficulties may arise in this process due to following reasons. y y y y y Heat transfer inside tubes may cause difficulty. Large scale production may not be feasible because of tube size and iron balls. Another setup has to be installed to remove water from acetone which is a by-product of this process. High temperature of 485 C has to be maintained which requires consumption of heat energy. When Catalyst has to be renewed, whole process has to be stopped.

Based on above facts , the manufacture of acetone from acetic acid process is far from being feasible and commercial as compared to the iso-propyl and cumene method .

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