Modeling of a gas-liquid phase cumene oxidation process for efficient synthesis of cumene hydroperoxide (HPOC)

Abstract

Cumene hydroperoxide (HPOC) have been extensively used as an important intermediate for developing and synthesizing cross-linking agents of large-scale production of plastics and rubbers. In the chemical industry, HPOC is widely produced by the cumene oxidation process, which is energy-intensive and highly exposed to safety hazards including severe fire and explosion incidents. In this contribution, the cumene oxidation takes place in the mixture of a gas-liquid binary system. The whole set-up of cumene oxidation process including synthesis, separation and purification was established and optimized by using Aspen HYSYS. In the modelling, cumene and O2 were carried by the air flow into a liquid phase of aqueous base solution. The conversion of HPOC was high as 31% at optimum base concentration. We further modelled the distillation separation process considering a multi-stage distillation process. By reducing the pressure of distillation from 200 to 20 kpa, the HPOC separation was more efficient with significant composition differences between gas and liquid phase. Under the pressure of 20 kpa, the purity of HPOC reached high as 80% with minimum energy consumption in the liquid phase after two-stage distillation, and further purified by post-treatment to yield high-purity product.