Abstract : Distillation is widely used in chemical and allied industries to separate fluid mixtures into pure components. It consumes a huge amount of energy in an inefficient way and thus, it is a potential candidate for heat integration. In this direction, the dividing wall column (DWC) has emerged as an attractive technology that reduces the energy consumption, cost and installation space. The present work aims at improving the energetic and economic performance of this DWC. To make the DWC more practical, the heat transfer through the internal dividing wall is considered and with this, we have developed a rigorous model. In distillation, the latent heat of the overhead vapor simply gets wasted in the condenser. To utilize this internal heat judiciously, a thermal coupling is made in the classical DWC between the top vapor with the liquid of intermediate tray and reboiler content. A variable manipulation policy at dynamic state is formulated for the proper utilization of internal heat source. There are azeotropes formed in many separating columns. In this regard, a ternary mixture with three (or multiple) binary azeotropes, which is sensitive to column operating pressure, is proposed to separate in a pressure-swing DWC (PSDWC). We have introduced two heat integrated schemes for this, namely vapor recompressed and heat integrated PSDWC. In the next, we have proposed single-partitioned and double-partitioned extractive dividing wall columns to separate a ternary mixture with two binary azeotropes. An extractive DWC, which has a single bottom reboiler instead of two reboilers (i.e., bottom and side reboiler), is configured for ethanol dehydration. Further advancement is made by thermally coupling the hot solvent with overhead ethanol vapor, intermediate water vapor and fresh feed. The performance of each of these proposed configurations of DWC is compared with their respective conventional counterpart in terms of energy and cost savings.
Keywords: Dividing wall column; heat transfer through the wall; pressure-swing DWC; extractive double-partitioned DWC; ethanol dehydration; energy and cost savings. Bio : Md Aurangzeb was born in Calcutta. He completed Bachelor in Chemical Engineering from National Institute of Technology Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India, in 2010. Subsequently, he completed Masters in the department of Chemical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Assam, India, in 2012. His Masters research primarily involved Kinetic Modeling of Alkylation of Benzene with long chain linear alkenes. He also worked in IBM India Pvt. Limited as SAP consultant for a period of nine months. Subsequently, after resigning at IBM, he joined department of Chemical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India, in 2013 to pursue PhD. His PhD research was on Process Intensification of Dividing wall column. He has given PhD synopsis on 30th September, 2019. Till date, he has five publications with 21 Scopus citations. His research interests are Process Intensification, Process Modelling and Simulation, and Process Control.
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