Acetic anhydride, acetone, Aspen Plus, ketene, acetic acid

This study investigates the modeling of production of acetic anhydride from acetone with Aspen Plus software. The purpose of this study is to simplify the design of the suitable system to produce acetic anhydride at a high degree of purity as well as to study the operational variables such as temperature, pressure and their effects on the products. In the design, acetone initially decomposes to ketene and methane; then ketene reacts with acetic acid to produce acetic anhydride at high purity. All these steps are to be modeled with Aspen Plus software at specific conditions. First, to produce ketene, suitable conditions are determined for the cracking reaction of acetone. Second, suitable conditions are chosen to produce acetic anhydride by the reaction of ketene and acetic acid. Then, the effects of operational variables on the products by sensitivity analysis are studied. Finally, the sensitivity analysis has been studied to find out the effects of the variables on the mole fractions of products providing the optimum conditions.