Cumene or isopropyl benzene or production is one of the large$-$scale productions in the world, one of the five largest petrochemical processes, ethylbenzene, benzene, propylene, cumene and ethylene. Due to its large consumption and importance, the production process receives more attention in chemical process industries. As an initial phase of process and plant design, process synthesis$/$creation is a crucial activity where all other activities are based on$.$ It is required to produce $80,000$ metric tonne$-$per$-$year of cumene with a purity of $99\mathrm{.}9\%.$

Cumene is manufactured by catalytic alkylation of benzene with propylene, associated with another unfavourable reaction $($side reaction$),$ as shown below. In the side reaction, cumene reacts with propylene to produce p$-$diisopropylbenzene $(p-$DIPB$)$ which is of little value. It is important to keep the selectivity of this reaction low by feeding large excess of benzene into the reactor.

Reactions data:

$\backslash$table$[[$Reaction $1,r_1=k_1{C}_P{C}_B$