It is a dehydrogenation unit that used to convert isobutane produced from the Butamer to a new compound that is Isobutylene. One of the vital points that must be considered is the feed, which enters this unit. The feed gas must be free of impurities that damage the platinum catalyst. Producing Isobutylene is summarized in the following stages. At the beginning, the isobutane that fed to the Oleflex unit is stored in Isobutane Sphere (V3103). V3103 is a pressurized storage to store Isobutane and to make sure that the operation of dehydrogenation is continuous. Then the regeneration receivers (V2215 A/ B) receives Isobutane from DIB overhead product pump (P-2101 A/B) and from V3103. However, both lines join and bring together to the fresh feed dries. The outlet feed stream from V2215 A/ B is routed to the filters (F2203 A/ B) to ensure that the feed stream supplied to the cold box is clean from dust and moisture. Isobutane that leaves the filters enters the cold box to produce a fresh stream of Isobutylene (C4H8) and Hydrogen (H2) rich recycle gas as shown in Equation (4). Finally, C4H8 and H2 pass through Hot Combine Feed Exchanger (E2201 A/ B) to be heated up before entering the three reactors that are connected in parallel (R-2201, R-2202, R-2203); Whereas the isobutane is converted into isobutylene by using the catalyst inside the three reactors.The percentage of the Isobutane that converted to Isobutylene …show more content…
The purpose of this stage is mixing the generated Isobutylene that comes from the Oleflex unit with the excess amount of methanol manufactured by QAFAC to produce MTBE. Two isobutylene spheres (V 3101, V 3102) are designed to store 2,400 m3 other than storing requirements. These spheres can receive isobutylene after shutdown in the downstream and they are continuously charge and receive Isobutylene in initial startup and normal shutdown. The feed passes through highly acidic ion exchange (V 2302), low temperature and relatively high pressure, these conditions are required to mix Isobutylene with methanol to produce MTBE. MX 2301 is the Mixer in this stage of the process that mixes isobutylene that comes from (V 3101, V 3102) with Methanol from Methanol drum (V 2303). Next, Isobutylene and Methanol reacted in reactor (R 2301) to produce 95% of MTBE at a pressure that equals 3400 kpagauge and temperature of 120o C. In addition, butane column (V 2304) is available and it has two objectives, which are reaching 98% to 99% of MTBE production and distillation of MTBE from other components such as Methanol and unreacted isobutylene. MTBE transferred to the storage tanks and the other compounds go to Water wash column (V 2306). V 2306 is the next column that extracts Methanol from the mixture of Methanol and unreacted Isobutylene. Extraction process occurred by