Retrofitting of extractive distillation columns with high flux, low separation factor membranes: A way to reduce the energy demand?
(2016) Chemical Engineering Research & Design — Vol. 109, p. 127-140 (2016)
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Retrofitting-of-extractive-distillation-columns-with-high-flux-low-separation-factor-membranes-A-way-to-reduce-the-energy-demand_2016_Chemical-Engineering-Research-and-Design.pdf
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- tIn the context of the production of n-butyl acetate, acetic acid or ethyl acetate from methylacetate, a pervaporation module was employed in order to retrofit the extractive distilla-tion unit used to recover methyl acetate from a methanol/methyl acetate industrial wastestream. The PolyAl TypM1®membrane (from PolyAnTM) was first tested using a wide feedconcentration range (11–90 mol% methanol) and three temperatures (30, 36, 44◦C). Then,it was compared with other commercial membranes reported in literature (at 40–45◦C) atthe methanol/methyl acetate azeotropic composition, resulting in a medium/low separationfactor and with the highest flux. This ensured the simulation of a very challenging conditionfor the retrofitting from an energetic point of view (i.e., for moderate or low separation factormembranes: the higher the flux, the higher the process energy requirement).The retrofitting permits to avoid the use of a solvent during azeotropic separation. More-over, during comparison of the retrofitted hybrid pervaporation-distillation unit with thesource industrial extractive distillation unit, an overall energy saving up to ∼38% wasdemonstrated (∼23% when only the energy consumed by the heaters is taken into account).In addition, major hydraulic modifications could be avoided employing structured packingand membranes of higher separation factors.
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Genduso, G., Amelio, A., Colombini, E., Luis Alconero, P., Degrève, J., & Van der Bruggen, B. (2016). Retrofitting of extractive distillation columns with high flux, low separation factor membranes: A way to reduce the energy demand? Chemical Engineering Research & Design, 109, 127-140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cherd.2016.01.013 (Original work published 2016)