Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.58, No.27, 12179-12191, 2019
Performance Enhancement of Reactive Dividing Wall Column Based on Self-Heat Recuperation Technology
Reactive dividing wall column (RDWC) is a highly integrated configuration where reaction and separation take place in a single equipment simultaneously. In this study, three self-heat recuperative reactive dividing wall column processes are developed to reduce the energy consumption of RDWC. Latent heat and sensible heat in the processes are recovered by self heat recuperation technology. The heat exchanger network using pinch analysis is applied to optimize the energy utilization. Total energy consumption, total annual cost, CO2 emissions, and thermodynamic efficiency are evaluated. Compared with the RDWC, the results demonstrate that the optimal design of the self-heat recuperative processes reduces the energy consumption by 58.1% and decreases the total annual cost by 17.8%. Apart from that, the CO2 emissions of the optimal design are 87.9% lower than the RDWC and the thermodynamic efficiency can be increased to 31.4%.