Study On Application Of Divided Wall Column In Process Intensification

Distillation, which has high energy consumption, is widely used unit operation inchemical industry. As a special structure of fully thermally coupled distillationcolumn, DWC can reduce energy consumption significantly, while also reducing thecost of equipment investment and floor space.This paper focused on research in the performance of DWC and the separation ofthe material on the basis of the Aspen simulation software, made the separation ofthree component alcohol mixture as a example, simulated the concentration andtemperature distribution in the DWC, and introduced the effect of feed composition,reflux ratio, vapor-liquid split ratio and bulkhead location on the separation results. Toverify the accuracy of the simulation, a small pilot experiment was also conducted,and the experimental results were basically consistent with the simulation results,which proved the feasibility of the DWC on the separation of the mixture once again.This paper also discussed the application of DWC in other areas, especially inthe RDWC and EDWC. In the research of RDWC, the hydrolysis reaction of methylacetate generated to methanol and acetic acid was studied, then the influences ofreflux ratio, liquid distribution ratio and molar ratio of ester in water on theconversion rate of methyl acetate and the purity of the product were investigated, theoptimum operation parameters was obtain finally. In order to analysis EDWC better,the conventional extractive distillation processes was studied. Comparing with eachother, it could be found that DWC decreased the degree of back-mixing, and itsconcentration, flow, temperature distribution were more reasonable, thus could saveenergy over20%.