Intensifying Kaibel dividing-wall column via vapor recompression heat pump

Abstract The four-product Kaibel dividing-wall column (KDWC) can save about 40% energy compared with the conventional distillation sequences. Nevertheless, the energy efficiency of KDWC are likely to be increased further by employing vapor recompression heat pump (VRHP) technology. The focus of this paper is to explore effective configurations to intensify the four-product KDWC via vapor recompression heat pump. Separation of two kinds of mixtures including n-pentane, n-hexane, n-heptane and n-octane and benzene, toluene, o-xylene and tri-methyl-benzene are chosen as illustrative cases. The standard vapor recompression heat pump assisted KDWC configuration (KDWC–SVRHP) and the vapor recompression heat pump assisted KDWC configuration with an intermediate reboiler (KDWC–VRHP-IR) are proposed in this paper and compared with the conventional distillation sequences and the original KDWC configuration. The feasibility and effectiveness of intensifying KDWC via vapor recompression heat pump technology is verified and the energy saving ability is explained by the exergy loss analysis. Results prove that KDWC–VRHP-IR is able to substantially reduce the operating cost of KDWC.

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