Executive summary

Dupont is one of the world’s forth largest chemical company based on market capitalisation.
In this report one of the chemical plant of Dupont which will be focused on is cellulosic ethanol plant.
The process which will be focused on is dehydration of ethanol. Dehydrated ethanol is used as an
antiseptic in the field of medical to relief pain. The process starts out with 91°C ethanol vapour (93%
ethanol, 7% water) as the feed reactant. In this dehydration process, the process will mainly focus on
distillation which separates the ethanol-water mixture into two mixture with different ethanol-water
ratio. The mixture also goes through some ‘heat exchange’ through the heat exchanger in between the
process to mainly cool down the final product of the mixture which is very hot. The final product
resulted from the process is a 38°C dehydrated alcohol (99.5% ethanol, 0.5% water) and 71°C
ethanol-water mixture (72% ethanol, 28% water).

Introduction
 In this plant the main unit operations involved in this process is distillation. The equipment
used in this process is distillation column. There are many types of distillation column such as packed
beds, plate, vacuum cryogenic, reactive extractive, pressure swing, homogeneous azeotropic and
heterogeneous azeotropic but for this case, this plant uses packed beds. Distillation works based on
removal of heat and the process exploits the differences in the individual chemicals (components)
volatility mixed together in the form of mixture. The heat will vaporise the component with the lower
boiling point into vapour while the one with higher boiling point will stay as liquid. This process is
usually easy if the volatility difference are huge. However, it will be difficult if the diffrences are very
small which makes the components almost having the same volatility so special distillation technique
is required with this kind of mixture.

The components and mixture will also go through some heating and cooling process. In this
case, heat exchanger will be the equipment suited for the task. The equipment works by using the
energy of the hot stream known as the shell fluid to heat the mixture or components flowing in
another tube through via conduction. The shell fluids flow around the tubes and has a lower mass and
more turbulent flow than the fluids passing through the tubes. One fluid flows through the tubes while
the other fluid is conducted through the shell. The shell fluids and tube fluid flow in three different
manner which are countercurrent, concurrent or cross flow. In countercurrent flow the tube fluid
flows in the opposite direction of the shell fluid. In concurrent flow, the tube fluid flow in the same
direction as the tube fluid. Lastly in cross flow, the tube fluid flows in the perpendicular direction of
the shell fluid. Generally, the flow manner which result in the most efficient heat transfer is
countercurrent flow.

In addition, pumps are also required to move the components around the system by increasing
the pressure or velocity of the fluid. The increase in pressure or velocity is required in order for the
fluid to overcome physical obstacles such as pipe friction and height changes. The pump is also
known as compressor.

Conclusion
 In conclusion, the cellulosic ethanol plant does not only seem simple but also prove to be
efficient. Based on the course learning outcome, the report had help us achieve two of the objectives.
One of the objectives is “develop flow sheeting for different chemical process” which we have done
so by creating a process flow diagram (PFD). The other is “apply computer based simulators for
solving chemical engineering problems” which we have so done so by using a computer software to
draw the PFD. The purpose of this plant design report is to investigate the process design of ethanol
cellulosic plant. The research is mostly done by researching information from the internet. While
doing so, it was quite a tedious work as we have to research page by page for a good research subject.
Even if we finally found a good subject, it took up even more time to understand the process flow
diagram (PFD) by understanding the meaning of the symbols, the flow of the reactant and the plant
mechanism in the diagram. After understanding the diagram, it is convenient enough to explain the
mechanism behind the process. In the end, the research result prove that the plant design is built based
on a reasonable process engineering and plant design assumption to create a low cost plant. The low
cost would make a profitable selling price for the end product of the ethanol.