Analysis of the Energy Savings by HIDiC for the Multicomponent Separation

Abstract

An analysis of energy savings by an internally Heat-Integrated Distillation Column (HIDiC) is conducted for the separation of multicomponent mixtures. The mixtures to be separated in this study are benzene-toluene-p-xylene (BTX) ternary system and twelve-component hydrocarbons system. The design and the operating variables are defined for both a conventional distillation column and a HIDiC, and the effect of each variable on the energy consumption is investigated by sensitivity analysis. Including the compressor duty, the energy consumption for BTX separation with HIDiC is only about 63 % of the conventional distillation column. For twelve-component hydrocarbons system, the HIDiC can save the energy of about 65 % compared to the conventional distillation column. These results show that the HIDiC can significantly reduce the energy consumption for the distillation processes.