Distillâre Necesse – towards Sustainable Distilling

Reducing the energy requirement of distillation columns and systems and related CO2 emissions are becoming a part of globally proclaimed efforts towards more sustainability in process industries, whereas the goal must be achieved without excessive capital investment. Methods and equipment to improve the sustainability of distillation are discussed, with particular emphasis on equipment advances that should allow and extend implementation of energy saving column configurations such as reactive distillation column, dividing wall column, and internally heat integrated distillation column.