Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.51, No.47, 15413-15422, 2012
Improving Energy Efficiency and Cost-Effectiveness of Batch Distillation for Separating Wide Boiling Constituents. 1. Vapor Recompression Column
Although the direct vapor recompression column (VRC) has been known for its application in continuous distillation since the 1960s, the research on vapor recompressed batch distillation (VRBD) started a couple of years ago. In this contribution, a batch splitter assisted by a heat pump of the vapor recompression type is investigated by rigorous method. When the VRC system is employed in batch processing, a variable manipulation procedure has to be adopted, leading to the adjustment of either the vapor inflow rate to the compressor by splitting. the overhead vapor or the external heat input to the reboiler. The present work aims at exploring the operational and economical feasibility Of the VRBD column for the fractionation of a mixture consisting of wide boiling components. By separating this binary mixture, it is quantitatively shown how closely, the reversible batch operation can be approximated by using the direct compression of overhead vapor. To further Strengthen the advantages of the VRC scheme over its conventional counterpart, a variable speed VRBD structure is proposed by introducing a variable speed compressor in the VRBD configuration aiming to run the column at controlled compression ratio.