Reactive dividing wall distillation columns: Simulation and implementation in a pilot plant

Hernández, Salvador; Sandoval-Vergara, Rodrigo; Barroso-Muñoz, Fabricio Omar; Murrieta-Dueñas, Rodolfo; Hernández‐Escoto, Héctor; Segovia‐Hernández, Juan Gabriel; Rico-Ramı́rez, Vicente

doi:10.1016/j.cep.2008.03.015

Cited by 82 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Remarkably, DWC is the only known large scale process intensification example where both capital and operating costs can be vastly reduced, with the additional benefit of reducing the required installation space by up to 40% [8,3]. Moreover, DWC is not limited to ternary separations only but it can be used also in extractive distillation [6], azeotropic separations [32], and reactive distillation [36,17,26,33]. DWC is considered a major breakthrough in distillation, as it brings significant reduction in CapEx and OpEx -up to 30-40% [19,8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reactive DWC leading the way to FAME and fortune

Kiss

Segovia‐Hernández

Bîldea

et al. 2012

Fuel

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106

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a b s t r a c tReactive separation processes were recently proposed for the synthesis of fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs), most of them making use of solid catalysts thus eliminating all conventional catalyst-related operations, improving process efficiency and reducing energy requirements. Such integrated systems require a stoichiometric reactants ratio in order to achieve complete conversion and high purity products. However, maintaining this ratio can be very difficult in practice, especially when the fatty acids feed composition is not constant in time.This study proposes a novel biodiesel process based on a reactive dividing-wall column (R-DWC) that allows the use of only $15% excess of methanol to completely convert the fatty acids feedstock. FAME are produced as pure bottom product, water as side stream, while the methanol excess is recovered as top distillate and recycled. The design is a challenging global optimization problem with discrete and continuous decision variables. The optimal setup was established by using simulated annealing as optimization method implemented in Matlab, and coupled with rigorous simulations carried out in Aspen Plus. Along with the FAME production, the novel design alternatives allow a fortune to be saved by reducing the energy requirements with over 25% and by using less equipment units than conventional processes.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reactive DWC leading the way to FAME and fortune

Kiss

Segovia‐Hernández

Bîldea

et al. 2012

Fuel

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106

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“…Energy optimization of the DWDC has already been reported in Hernández et al [1] and it is shown in Fig. 5.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…According to results for a reactive DWDC [1], the manipulation of the interconnecting vapor flow is more difficult than the manipulation of the interconnecting liquid stream. This has been accounted for by using a side tank for external manipulation of the liquid.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Experimental study on pressure drops in a dividing wall distillation column

Barroso-Muñoz

Hernández

Hernández‐Escoto

et al. 2010

Chemical Engineering and Processing: Process Intensification

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a b s t r a c tPrevious studies in the fields of process design and process control [1] have shown the potential benefits that can be achieved through the implementation of thermally coupled distillation sequences, in particular, the dividing wall distillation column. The dividing wall distillation column meets important goals of process intensification, including energy savings, reduction in carbon dioxide emissions and miniaturization. In this paper, an experimental study on the hydrodynamic behavior of a dividing wall distillation column is presented. Several different values for gas and liquid velocities were tested in order to measure pressure drops and identify operational regions; the air/water system was used as the basis for the experimental setup. Results regarding pressure drops (fitted to the model of Stichlmair et al.) provide operational limits for the operation of the packed dividing wall distillation column. According to the results, the experimental dividing wall column can be operated at turbulent regime that is associated to proper mass transfer.

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“…The reactive dividing-wall distillation column was a process which could couple the process of reactive distillation with the dividing-wall distillation column, then reaction and separation processes could be carried out simultaneously. Many reports on the reactive dividing-wall distillation column were available in the open literature [6][7][8][9][10] . Those researches showed that, reactive dividing-wall distillation could overcome the equilibrium limitations of reversible reactions, increase the selectivities and conversion rates of reactions, and then improve production capacity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and Simulation of Reactive Dividing-Wall Distillation Column for Transesterification of Methyl Acetate with n-Propanol

Feng¹

2017

Proceedings of the 2017 2nd International Conference on Materials Science, Machinery and Energy Engineering (MSMEE 2017)

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Abstract.A new process was designed for the transesterification of methyl acetate with npropanol. That is, reactive dividing-wall distillation column technology is used instead of conventional reactive distillation column and methyl acetate -methanol separation column to product n-propyl acetate and methanol. The reaction distillation process was simulated by Aspen Plus simulation software. N-propyl acetate and methanol are produced from the bottom of the main column and the sub-column, respectively. The influence of feed position of n-propanol (PROH) and methyl acetate (MEAC), reflux ratio and liquid phase distribution ratio on the heat duty of reboiler was investigated on the premise of the purity of n-propyl acetate is ensured. The simulation result shows that the new process has great advantages on capital cost saving, because not only the equipment occupancy space but also the investment in condenser are reduced.

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Reactive dividing wall distillation columns: Simulation and implementation in a pilot plant

Cited by 82 publications

References 10 publications

Reactive DWC leading the way to FAME and fortune

Reactive DWC leading the way to FAME and fortune

Experimental study on pressure drops in a dividing wall distillation column

Design and Simulation of Reactive Dividing-Wall Distillation Column for Transesterification of Methyl Acetate with n-Propanol

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