Dmso Essay

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Market Analysis The goal of this process is to produce 2200 pounds per hour of >99.7% purity DMSO from lignin. The plant will operate for 8000 hours per year, netting a total production rate of 8800 tons of DMSO produced per year. The global market for DMSO is approximately 60,000 tons per year from 2008 data. This accounts for roughly 15% of the global market for DMSO. A startup chemical plant should not be designed to capture 15% of the global market of the commodity that it is producing, so future work on this design should focus on turndown ratio or scaling the process down. That said, the market for DMSO is increasing. The US supplier of DMSO, Gaylord Chemical Company, is moving towards a petrochemical route for production of DMS, in response to increased demand for DMSO. Furthermore, there are only three major suppliers of DMSO worldwide: Gaylord, Toray, and Arkema. It may well be that the only economic way to produce DMSO is to “go big or go home”, and 15% might very well be a reasonable market capture. Location Analysis Refer to Appendix 12 – Constraints Review. Process Summary A more detailed examination of the process follows. Refer to appendix 2 for block flow diagrams and appendix 3 for process flow diagrams. The process flow diagrams contain the mass flows of each stream. Refer to appendix 4 for the heat loads and sinks from each unit. Refer to appendix 6 for a list of process equipment. Black liquor, purchased from the paper mill, enters the plant and is mixed with sodium hydroxide to adjust the pH of the solution to 12. After the pH has been adjusted, this mixture flows into a surge tank, designed to keep the plant operating through any transient changes in the rate of feed of black liquor. From the surge tank, the alkaline black liquor is heated to 343F, and then pumped into the first reactor. Simultaneous with the heating and movement of

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