Part of the book: Advances in Chemical Engineering
In many books, the Solvay process is mentioned as one of the most widely used processes for the production of sodium carbonate. However, on the contrary, no information has been found in the literature that allows for the availability of the functionality of thermodynamic, kinetic, physical, and physicochemical properties with temperature for the exothermic reactions that occur. As it is known, this type of reaction implies that the tower should be cooled. However, no information or heuristic has been found to assign or select the optimal stage for cooling. In this work, a carbonating tower is designed using a simulator to consider the aforementioned functionality, solely based on the input stream data. The beneficial effect of cooling on column performance is confirmed. Subsequently, a cooling mode is established, and the optimal stage to be cooled is determined. Additionally, a heuristic has been proposed to choose the best candidate stages to be cooled. Finally, a sensitivity study of sodium bicarbonate performance is conducted; the variation of concentration and temperature of the product stream is examined in response to changes in the temperature of the feed streams, and a nomogram is presented to solve the proposed study.
Part of the book: Solvents