A heat pump
is applied in pressure-swing distillation (PSD) for separating an
isobutanol/isobutyl acetate mixture in this paper. To ensure dry compression
and prevent compressor damage, a preheater is added before the compressor
based on the dry fluid property of the isobutanol/isobutyl acetate
mixture. In addition, the optimal preheated temperature of the overhead
vapor stream may further improve the performance of the heat pump-assisted
PSD process. Through optimization and analysis, the optimum superheat
values of overhead vapor streams from two columns are 12 and 8.4 °C,
respectively. The coefficients of performance of heat pumps achieve
maximum values of 17.18 and 20, and the total annual cost of the process
is minimum. Moreover, a heat exchanger network (HEN) is applied in
the heat pump with preheater-assisted PSD (HPPSD) to reduce the use
of steam in preheaters. Compared with the conventional PSD, the total
annual costs, energy consumption, and CO2 emission of the
HPPSD-HEN process are decreased by 69.8, 83.99, and 79.58%, respectively.
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