Process Design and Simulation of Sulphuric Acid Plant

Abstract

Sulphuric acid is an important chemical produced through Contact Process all over the world. Our study presents the steady state model, simulation for an industrial sulfuric acid plant. The model, implemented in Aspen-HYSYS includes a catalytic reactor (four pass converter), heat exchangers, mixers, splitters and reactive absorption columns. In a single integrated environment, Aspen HYSYS V8.8 was used successfully for the design of all sulfuric acid subprocesses. Real plant data and theoretical data for maximum percent SO2 oxidized material and energy streams agree very well with the simulation results, sized unit operations can be used to perform an economic assessment of each process. The developed simulation model can also be used as a guidance on process and economic understanding and a basis on which more sophisticated plant design and process equipment design models can be specified. Before Simulation, each of the important equipment has been designed i.e. Reactor, Absorber and heat exchanger. Following the equipment design, extensive economic analysis has been carried out to estimate the cost and payback period of a Sulphuric acid plant. One of the main objective of the project is to carry out a sensitivity analysis. It has been carried out using a MATLAB code to extract data from excel sheet and apply it in Aspen HYSYS. Process Control has been described using a temperature controller and a flow controller on reactor and heat exchanger. HAZOP Analysis on reactor and absorber has also been completed and demonstrated.