Simulación y validación de un proceso para la obtención de etanolaminas

Abstract

The present investigation shows a process through which it is possible to obtain Ethanolamines, chemical compounds very much in use in industry, mainly in the surfactants production, pesticides, medicines and polyurethanes. Such a process was simulated in a specialized software DWSIM, using a continuous reactor, two distillation columns for the recovery zone of water and ammonia, and two distillation towers for the product separation; upon stablishing all the corresponding operating conditions, percentages of 15%, 13% and 70% were obtained for monoethanolamine (MEA), diethanolamine (DEA) and triethanolamine (TEA) respectively, at the end of the recovery zone; however at the recovery zone a 99% purity was reached for each ethanolamine. A 120 data base was created, from a sensitivity analysis for parameters such as reactor volume, mole fraction of ammonia and mole fraction of ethylene oxide (EO), this way, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) in MATLAB was considered as an input for the design; the corresponding output from simulations were the mass flows of the interest products (MEA, DEA y TEA). Tests were carried out changing the algorithm and the number of neurons at the moment of the network testing up to obtaining the lowest quadratic mean error (MSE). This way the simulation validation was carried out. It is recommended to propose new tests to reduce the MSE.