Nonequilibrium behavior in ethylene/polyethylene flash separators

In this work, we investigated various approaches for the modeling of the high- and low-pressure separator units downstream from a low-density polyethylene tubular reactor using the Polymers Plus software package. First, we examined the performance of thermodynamic equilibrium by using the perturbed-chain statistical associating fluid theory (PC-SAFT) equation of state. Experimental data taken from the open literature were used to obtain the model parameters. Comparison with data from an Equistar plant showed that the PC-SAFT simulations agreed very well with the low-pressure separator residual-ethylene solubility measurements. There were, however, significant discrepancies between the model and the plant data for the high-pressure separator, indicating that the high-pressure separator is not operating at equilibrium conditions. A further investigation was performed where a physical mechanism based on a bubble formation model was evaluated and a mathematical correlation using dimensionless numbers developed. The resulting model yielded high-pressure separator predictions that agreed adequately with plant data.