Improving Energy Efficiency of Distillation

Distillation is the most widely used separation process. It is always important to design and build an energy efficient process within the capital constraint. We will discuss some of our recent work on how to improve efficiency of multicomponent distillation through proper choice of column arrangement. We will also present new heat and mass integrated distillation columns that are not only most energy efficient, but also use reduced number of distillation sections leading to lower capital cost. Finally, we will briefly discuss novel dividing wall column arrangements that do not have the conventional constraint of splitting vapor between the two sides of a dividing wall. This enables multicomponent distillation with process intensification while providing high energy efficiency.

These examples illustrate that multicomponent distillation research is vibrant and provides rewarding opportunities for performance improvements.