Electrical-driven self-heat recuperative pressure-swing azeotropic distillation to minimize process cost and CO2 emission: Process electrification and simultaneous optimization

Chengtian Cui, Nguyen Van Duc Long, Jinsheng Sun and Moonyong Lee

Energy, 2020, vol. 195, issue C

Abstract: Azeotropic separation by pressure-swing distillation (PSD) is one of the most costly processes in the chemical industry. To minimize process cost and CO2 emission, process electrification based on self-heat recuperation technology (SHRT) has been implemented in many thermal-driven processes. Enlightened by these facts, a novel electrical-driven PSD-SHRT process is proposed and compared with conventional thermal-driven PSD (PSD-CONV) and PSDs integrated with heat integration and heat pump. Two typical binary systems – tetrahydrofuran (THF)/water with minimum-boiling azeotrope and acetone/chloroform with maximum-boiling azeotrope – are selected to investigate the potential economic and environmental benefits of process electrification. To make a fair comparison, all the processes are optimized to a minimum in total annualized cost (TAC) based on a simulation-based optimization framework combining Aspen Plus (process simulator) and MATLAB (external optimizer). The optimization results indicate PSD-SHRT to be the lowest in both TAC and CO2 emission of all the alternative processes. In THF/water system, PSD-SHRT triumphs over PSD-CONV by 23.72% in TAC and 83.67% in CO2 emission, respectively. Corresponding values increase to 47.82% and 92.90% in the acetone/chloroform system. These improvements verify the significant advantages of process electrification and also encourage more originations to introduce SHRT into other processes.

Keywords: Self-heat recuperation; Pressure-swing; Azeotropic distillation; Simultaneous optimization algorithm; Thermal-electric integration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:195:y:2020:i:c:s0360544220301055

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2020.116998

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