Modeling and Simulation a Catalytic Fixed Bed Reactor to Produce Ethyl Benzene from Ethanol

Document Type : Research Paper

Abstract

Ethyl benzene used increasingly each year is the raw material of producing styrene monomer. This substance
is produced from benzene alkylation with ethylene or ethanol, depending on the availability and cost of raw
materials. In this study benzene alkylation in the presence of ethanol in a catalytic fixed bed reactor in
three states of isotherm, adiabatic and non-isotherm-non-adiabatic is mathematically modeled with onedimensional
pseudo- homogeneous model; and then has been programmed with math lab software. The
reaction kinetics model is used in this study which comes from the experimental equations found by Mr.
U.S Ridevi et al. in a zeolite catalyst impregnated with AlCl3 obtained in isotherm mode. The results of this
simulation in isotherm state are comparable with experimental data. The adiabatic and non-isotherm-nonadiabatic
states also show acceptable results. Furthermore, in this study the effect of various factors such as
the feed flow rate, substrate temperature, substrate density, fixed and variable heat capacity and viscosity of
fluid has been investigated.

Keywords

• Fixed Bed Reactor
• Ethyl Benzene
• Modeling
• Simulation
• Ethanol
• catalyst

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