Simulation of ethylene oxide production from ethylene cholorhydrin

This article is devoted to the consideration of methods for the industrial production of ethylene oxide. Ethylene oxide is produced in large quantities and is primarily used as an intermediate in the production of a number of industrial chemicals, the best known of which is ethylene glycol. The process of producing ethylene oxide is carried out by a direct vapor-phase oxidation process, in which ethylene is oxidized to ethylene oxide by air or oxygen and a silver catalyst at 10-30 atm (1–3 MPa) and 200-300 °C. Ethylene oxidation can be carried out in several ways: air, oxygen under nitrogen ballast, oxygen under methane ballast. The production of ethylene oxide is one of the most dynamically developing. In Russia, the leading place in the production of ethylene oxide is occupied by the enterprise PJSC Nizhnekamskniftekhim. In 2012, the installation for producing ethylene oxide was reconstructed. The reconstruction consisted of transferring the ethylene oxide synthesis stage to methane ballast conditions. A patent analysis was carried out to determine the relevance of this process.

Kinetic hydrogen isotope effects in ethylene oxidation on silver catalysts

Fixed-bed reactors are widely employed in industrial processes such as ethylene oxide production. Traditional multiobjective optimization typically requires repeated evaluations of a large number of candidate designs, making it time-consuming and computationally expensive. This study introduces a physics-informed DeepONet framework for multi-objective prediction. The model encodes catalyst geometric parameters via a multilayer perceptron (branch net) and processes 3D spatial coordinates using a convolutional neural network (trunk net) to extract spatial features. To ensure physical consistency, mass conservation constraints are embedded in the loss function. The proposed framework effectively captures the nonlinear mapping between 3D structural parameters and flow fields, achieving much higher accuracy compared to purely data-driven models. Coupled with a genetic algorithm, it enables the efficient identification of optimal geometries, resulting in improvements of 23.46% in ethylene conversion and 1.46% in ethylene oxide yield compared with the base case operating point, thereby facilitating practical advancements in industrial reactor design and optimization.

Supported silver catalysts for the oxidation of ethylene: The effects of thermal treatment of alumina as catalyst support

High surface area α-aluminas III. Oxidation of ethylene, ethylene oxide, and acetaldehyde over silver dispersed on high surface area α-alumina

The objective of this work was to investigate the effects of two different oxidizing agents [nitrous oxide (N2O) and air], compared to the reported pure oxygen (O2), on the ethylene epoxidation performance in a low-temperature parallel plate dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) system with two frosted glass plates as the dielectric barrier material under ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure. A separate feed technique, with the ethylene (C2H4) feed position fraction of 0.5, was used to reduce all the undesirable reactions and to maximize the ethylene oxide (EO) production (selectivity and yield). The N2O system with a N2O/C2H4 feed molar ratio of 0.17:1 exhibited the highest ethylene epoxidation performance (80.1% EO selectivity and 21.9% EO yield) with a very low carbon monoxide selectivity and the lowest power consumption, as compared to pure O2 and air as oxidant systems at their respective optimal feed molar ratios of 0.2:1 and 0.1:1, respectively. Interestingly, the EO yield from the DBD system ...

Ethylene oxide is an important industrial chemical compound used as an intermediate in the production of glycols and other plastics. In the present work, the process of ethylene oxide (EO) production from the catalytic oxidation of ethylene was simulated using the ChemCAD® simulator. Heat curves were obtained for each of the shell and tube heat exchangers used, while the flow rate and composition of the most important streams involved in the production process were determined. A sensitivity study was also carried out to establish the influence of a decrease in the feed temperature of the wash water to the absorbers on the amount of EO to be obtained in the distillation column. 22,163.5 kg/h of EO is obtained from the top of the distillation column with a purity of 98.29 %. The wash water should be fed to the absorbers at a temperature of 5 ºC to maximise the amount of EO to be obtained in the distillation column.

Structure and Drug Release in a Crosslinked Poly(Ethylene Oxide) Hydrogel

In this project, α-alumina-supported silver catalysts were investigated for the ethylene epoxidation reaction. Ethylene oxide, the desired end product, is an important feedstock for products such as antifreeze and plastics. In this reaction, CO₂ is the main byproduct, resulting from further combustion reactions of ethylene oxide. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how CO₂ formation can be suppressed by studying the catalyst. We first prepared α-alumina support material using carbohydrate-based templates. Both templates resulted in support materials with a much higher surface area than commercially available materials, which is essential for making the catalyst more efficient. The purity of the α-alumina depended on the template size and calcination time. Pure α-alumina is critical for overall selectivity toward the desired ethylene oxide. Silver particles were then added to these supports to study how particle size and preparation methods affect catalyst performance. The main conclusion: not only is the size of the silver particles important, but also the ratio between the active silver surface and the surface area of the support. This influences how much of the desired product is formed and how much ethylene oxide further reacts to CO₂. In addition, we studied how the addition of rhenium- or alkali-based (such as lithium, sodium, or cesium) promoters changes the catalyst’s performance. Rhenium oxide helped increase selectivity by suppressing overall activity. However, rhenium oxide in combination with the industrially important gaseous ethyl chloride promoter led to undesirable side reactions. On the other hand, alkali promoters helped suppress these side reactions, even at higher conversions, especially larger ones like cesium. Experiments with these “solid” promoters were carried out with and without the gaseous ethyl chloride. This research highlights how different promoters interact with the active sites and emphasizes the importance of carefully combining and studying promoters.

A flow type apparatus was used for kinetic studies of the silver catalyzed oxidation of ethylene oxide (EtO) by oxygen at 274 °C. Using N2 as diluent the concentrations of O2 and ethylene oxide were varied independently from 9.9 to 79% and 2.35 to 9.4% respectively while a total pressure of 1 atmosphere was maintained. Flow rates were varied to give a range of contact times varying from 0.06 to 0.25 sec. It was shown that EtO is oxidized without previous dissociation into C2H4 and O2. The dependence of the initial rate of oxidation of EtO on reactant concentrations excludes isomerization of EtO (to acetalde hyde) as a main step in its oxidation, and a direct oxidation mechanism is suggested. The results of a few experiments to determine the extent of isomerization of EtO to acetaldehyde in the absence of oxygen are presented. No steady state could be achieved but the results may be used semiquantitatively to support the belief that isomerization is not the rate determining step in the oxidation of ethylene oxide.

The electrochemical synthesis of ethylene oxide (EO) using ethylene and water under ambient conditions presents a low‐carbon alternative to existing industrial production process. Yet, the electrocatalytic ethylene epoxidation route is currently hindered by largely insufficient activity, EO selectivity, and long‐term stability. Here we report a single atom Ru‐doped hollandite structure KIr4O8 (KIrRuO) nanowire catalyst for efficient EO production via a chloride‐mediated ethylene epoxidation process. The KIrRuO catalyst exhibits an EO partial current density up to 0.7 A cm−2 and an EO yield as high as 92.0 %. The impressive electrocatalytic performance towards ethylene epoxidation is ascribed to the modulation of electronic structures of adjacent Ir sites by single Ru atoms, which stabilizes the *CH2CH2OH intermediate and facilitates the formation of active Cl2 species during the generation of 2‐chloroethanol, the precursor of EO. This work provides a single atom modulation strategy for improving the reactivity of adjacent metal sites in heterogeneous electrocatalysts.

Epoxidation of ethylene by anion radicals of α-oxygen on the surface of FeZSM-5 zeolite

Utilization of CO2 for Ethylene Oxide

Biojet fuel production via deoxygenation of crude palm kernel oil using Pt/C as catalyst in a continuous fixed bed reactor

Large scale natural gas reserves are often located far away from the area of utilization. This poses the problem of methane transformation into easily transportable products. After a brief overview of the reserves available, the direct conversion of methane to chloromethanes, hydrogen cyanide, carbon disulphide and acetylene with the present available technology is briefly described. The indirect transformation of methane via syngas manufacture to chemicals and fuels, such as ammonia, methanol and its derivatives, Fischer Tropsch products, “oxo-derivation” products, is outlined. The production of ethylene by steam cracking from different feedstocks, and its main applications in the production of polyethylenes, ethylene oxide, ethylene dichloride and ethylbenzene are summarized. Recent production data for some of the products are also given. Areas of research for the development of future technologies are discussed.