Abstract A Simulated Moving Bed Reactor (SMBR), comprising a homogeneous mixture of adsorbent and catalyst, can overcome the equilibrium constraints in the production of p-xylene (PX). In this proposal, toluene and benzene were respectively considered as desorbent in the process. The arrangement of columns and optimum operating conditions such as switching time and flow rates that lead to maximum p-xylene productivity and minimum desorbent consumption were determined. Several constraints, including maximum pressure drop per bed and purity, were considered. Additionally, the operating temperature was optimized for the first time taking into account the energy consumption within the associated distillation columns; the heat integration involving the distillation columns was also discussed. Finally, toluene showed better performance than benzene as desorbent. For the best case studied, the optimized temperature was 540 K. Moreover, an increase of about 25% in the recovery of PX, compared to the conventional Simulated Moving Bed, was obtained.

中文翻译：

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用于对二甲苯生产的模拟移动床反应器：建模、模拟和优化

摘要 模拟移动床反应器 (SMBR) 包含吸附剂和催化剂的均匀混合物，可以克服对二甲苯 (PX) 生产中的平衡限制。在该提议中，甲苯和苯分别被认为是该过程中的解吸剂。确定了使对二甲苯生产率最大化和解吸剂消耗最少的塔的排列和最佳操作条件，例如切换时间和流速。考虑了几个限制因素，包括每床的最大压降和纯度。此外，考虑到相关蒸馏塔内的能耗，首次优化了操作温度；还讨论了涉及蒸馏塔的热集成。最后，甲苯作为解吸剂表现出比苯更好的性能。对于研究的最佳案例，优化温度为 540 K。此外，与传统的模拟移动床相比，PX 的回收率提高了约 25%。