Modeling the Industrial Propylene–Ethylene Copolymerization FBR at Emergency Accidents

Abstract

Abstract In order to quantitatively describe the pressure change during the copolymerization in industrial fluidized bed reactors, a dynamic reactor model was developed according to the mass and energy balances as well as real gas state-equation and copolymerization kinetics. Furthermore, in order to inspect the performance of pressure relief devices in response to the accident conditions, a set of pressure relief equations were also incorporated into the dynamic reactor model. Therefore, the extended reactor model is able to calculate the relief pressure besides other variables in the reactors such as temperature, slurry density and solid hold-up, which provides an important guidance for selecting pressure relief device and safe production. Dynamic data from certain industrial reactor were used to verify the above model. Finally, the application of the extended model was demonstrated by simulating several typical emergency accidents.