Flexibility Options for Absorption and Distillation to Adapt to Raw Material Supply and Product Demand Uncertainties: A Review

Abstract

The chemical industry has to deal with increasing uncertainties regarding the boundary conditions of their production processes. On the one hand, uncertainties affect the availability, quality, and prizes of raw material and energy. On the other hand, the demand side is affected by increasing volatilities in product demand and increasing requirements for product variety. These changing boundary conditions lead to higher needs for flexibility in production processes of the chemical industry. Within this article technical solutions for an enhancement of different forms of flexibility are presented for production concepts and apparatus concepts, respectively. The latter focuses on unit operations for the separation of gas-liquid mixtures. This includes a review regarding transformable, modular production processes and a classification of their field of application. Additionally, concepts for named unit operations on different scales are presented and discussed. The presented concepts are also classified with respect to the different types of flexibility.

Flexibility of Power‐to‐Gas Plants: A Case Study

“…This level constitutes a distinct turning point in terms of cost; however, operation under different capacities and feed concentrations was proven possible. Options for enhancing the flexibility of absorption columns such as modularization and segmentation of the apparatus are discussed by Riese et al [16,17]. Motivated by the prospect of dynamic process operation, various authors have conducted studies concerning operational flexibility.…”

New Column Design to Enhance Flexibility: Concept for Hydrodynamic Characterization

“…With the so created changeable cross section or active area of the column, an optimal operation can be achieved without any loss in separation efficiency for varying feed flow rates. This results in a significantly broader operation range compared to conventional columns 6.…”

Transformable Decentral Production for Local Economies with Minimized Carbon Footprint

“…Effort has also been put into the development of analogous concepts for separation technologies [33]. As micro-structured reactors have proven to be scalable to sufficient production capacities, micro-structured and efficient separation technologies are not suitable for modular production [34].…”