Heat Integrated Process Design, Simulation and Control of Polymerization and Drying Sections for HDPE Production

This paper describes a production model for high density polyethylene. Aspen Polymer Plus was used to model and simulate the polymerization drying and separation sections. Heat operations were improved using Aspen Energy Analyzer; The pinch analysis method generated, the heat exchanger network. The dynamic model via Aspen Plus Dynamics evaluated the stability and controllability of the models. The simulation results such as production rate, polydispersity index, weight-average molecular weight, and number-average molecular weight correponded with Hakim and Moballegh [1]. Five heat exchanger networks were proposed: the one with the lowest total index cost was selected to perform the dynamics analysis.