Feasibility and parametric study of tetrahydrofuran dehydration using reactive distillation with low energy requirement

Yadollah Tavan

Energy, 2014, vol. 76, issue C, 622-628

Abstract: A new configuration of a RD (reactive distillation) process is investigated to break the THF (tetrahydrofuran)/water azeotrope using Hysys process software. The main module is a column system containing the reaction of EO (ethylene oxide) with water, in which top and bottom streams are the desired products, THF and EG (ethylene glycol), respectively. This contribution explores feasibility of using the reaction in the RD column and also describes the influence of reflux ratio, reaction trays, operating pressure and feed–inlet locations of the RD column in simulation environment. The results show that high purities of EG and THF are simultaneously obtained by this novel technique leading to more profits of the RD process. The optimal design of the RD process is obtained by minimizing the energy demand and the optimum number of reactive trays is found to be 10. Furthermore, minimum energy demand is observed when the column operates at atmospheric pressure with reflux ratio of 1.25. Particularly, it is found that the optimal reboiler duty per unit THF produced is reduced from 32 to 3.7% for the new process as compared to the conventional one, while both schemes predict similar outputs.

Keywords: Reactive distillation; Azeotrope; Tetrahydrofuran; Ethylene glycol; Static analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544214009992
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:76:y:2014:i:c:p:622-628

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2014.08.063

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().