Design 1

Team BAT Final Report

Authors: Anne Disabato, Tim Hanrahan, Brian Merkle

Instructors: Fengqi You, David Wegerer, David Chen

Date Presented: March 14, 2014

Executive Summary

In an effort to build a new bio-product facility for Evanston Chemical, Team BAT is considering producing 99.7% propylene glycol solution. Team BAT designed a small-scale process to use the crude glycerin waste from an up-steam biodiesel facility. It was assumed that capital is available at 12%.

Research on an industrially available propylene glycol manufacturing process, patented by GTC Technology, and a universal process for purifying crude glycerin were used guided the final design [1], [2]. The facility is divided into two sub-processes: pre-treatment of crude glycerin and continuous hydrogenolysis of glycerin to propylene glycol. Microsoft Visio and Aspen HYSYS were used to design the process flow diagram and simulate the production. All other calculations were performed in Microsoft Excel. The plant was designed to operate safely, and have minimal environmental impact.

Team BAT’s plant produces 18.6 tonnes per year of 99.7% propylene glycol. Economic analysis predicts a net present value of - $4.2 million on a twenty-year basis. Based on this analysis, the proposed propylene glycol production facility would be not be economically viable without considerable scale-up and optimization.