Diseño del proceso de purificación de estireno mediante adsorción en alúmina

Résumé

In this work, the design of the purification process of styrene by adsorption onto activated alumina, has been carried out. The purification consists basically of removing water and a polimerisation inhibitor, 4-terc-butyl catechol (TBC), as a previous step in the manufacture of synthetic rubber. To determine the experimental working conditions, a real process that operates on industrial scale in a factory which produces synthetic rubber in Spain (Dynasol Elastómeros) has been taken as reference. The styrene used in this work is the industrial raw material and contains approximately 150 mg/kg of water and 15 mg/kg of polimerisation inhibitor. First, adsorption equilibrium water-alumina and TBC-alumina have been studied. Then, some dynamic experiments on laboratory scale have been carried out in order to obtain breakthrough curves for both adsorbates. A mathematical model that describes the mass transfer process has been developed analysing the possible resistances, and the corresponding parameters have been obtained. To analise the scale-up of the adsorption process a pilot plant has been built in the synthetic rubber factory and the experimental results have been compared with the results predicted by the mathematical model. Finally, thanks to the mathematical model, the parameters that have been obtained during the laboratory scale experiments and its validation on pilot plant scale, a model that can describe the industrial process and can be useful to find the best operation conditions has been developed.