Simulation and Optimization of Isopropanol Production by Acetone Hydrogenation Process

Isopropanol is an extremely widely used chemical product. With the outbreak of COVID-19 worldwide, the export demand of isopropanol keeps increasing, and the supply is in short supply. In order to meet the demand of isopropyl alcohol in the international market, the existing production process faces new challenges and needs to be improved and upgraded. In this design, Aspen Plus was used to simulate the existing hydrogenation process of acetone to isopropanol, and it was improved and optimized to establish an annual output of 5 kT isopropanol and a variety of by-products of different specifications. The process adopts double-effect distillation and heat pump distillation to reduce energy consumption, and a set of waste liquid recovery device is designed to effectively recover the by-products and achieve the purpose of improving economic benefits. Simulation results of Aspen Plus show that energy consumption, carbon emission, water consumption and solid waste utilization rate can be reduced by 36.73%, 40%, 45% and 80% respectively, meeting the requirements of "Made in China 2025".