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Improved Design and Efficiency of the Extractive Distillation Process for Acetone–Methanol with Water
journal contribution
posted on 2015-01-14, 00:00 authored by Xinqiang You, Ivonne Rodriguez-Donis, Vincent GerbaudWe show how thermodynamic insight
can be used to improve the design
of a homogeneous extractive distillation process, and we define an
extractive efficiency indicator to compare the optimality of different
designs. The case study is related to the separation of the acetone–methanol
minimum boiling azeotrope with water. The process flow sheet includes
both the extractive distillation column and the entrainer regeneration
column. Insight from analysis of the ternary residue curve map and
isovolatility curves shows that a lower pressure reduces the minimal
amount of entrainer needed and increases the relative volatility of
acetone–methanol in the extractive column. A 0.6 atm pressure
is selected to enable the use of cheap cooling water in the condenser.
We optimize the entrainer flow rate, adjusting both column reflux
ratios and feed locations, by minimizing the total energy consumption
per product unit. The total annualized cost (TAC) is calculated for
all processes. Double-digit savings in energy consumption and in TAC
are achieved compared to literature values. We then propose a novel
efficiency indicator that describes the ability per tray of extractive
section to discriminate the desired product between the top and the
bottom of the extractive section. Shifting the feed trays’
locations improves the efficiency of the separation, even when less
entrainer is used.
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energy consumption0.6 atm pressureTACnovel efficiency indicatorextractive sectionprocess flow sheetextractive distillation columnternary residue curve mapentrainer regeneration columnextractive distillation processcolumn reflux ratiosExtractive Distillation Processextractive efficiency indicatorentrainer flow rate