Abstract

The Heat-Integrated In Distillation Column in this experiment is a special distillation column that involves the internal heat integration between the whole rectifying and the whole stripping sections. It covers from the thermodynamic development and evaluations to the practical design and operation investigations for the process. For this experiment, an HYSYS operation is used to determine the result for the reduce pressure of equimolar mixture of feed at 2700 kmol/h to two distillation column. The first distillation column is feed with a stream of 5.2 bars and the second distillation column is feed with a stream of 1.01 bars with the same temperature at 25C.

Theory Distillation is a method of separation of substances based on differences in their volatilities. In simple distillation, all the hot vapors produced are immediately channeled into a condenser which cools and condenses the vapors. Thus, the distillate will not be pure - its composition will be identical to the composition of the vapors at the given temperature and pressure, and can be computed from Raoult's law. Multicomponent distillation systems employ multiple column units for multiple individual separation tasks. The final performance of a multicomponent distillation system will depend on the optimum synergy of the multiple individual tasks within the distillation system. Traditionally, there are two techniques to reduce energy consumption of a multicomponent distillation system. One is through heat integrations among the condensers and reboiler of the traditional simple column configurations. Another is using thermal couplings to eliminate some of the condensers and reboiler of traditional distillation configurations. These two techniques are separately used in design of distillation systems for ternary mixtures. In this experiment we use heat integrated in distillation column. Although the heat integrated in distillation column concept has been researched for a number of years, it has not yet been commercialized. Recent literature describes an embodiment of the concept, which resembles a shell-and-tube heat exchanger. However an alternative embodiment based on a compact (plate) heat exchanger has several potential advantages over the shell-and-tube design. These advantages include compactness, a closer temperature approach, modular structure, and flexibility in design. In order to investigate the feasibility of a heat integrated in distillation column design based on a plate-fin heat exchanger, a computer program has been developed. This approach is based on an existing model for conventional distillation, coupled to a spreadsheet program that incorporates correlations for such factors as flooding, wetting, and fin efficiency, and that takes account of geometric constraints in the plate-fin design. The software was applied in a preliminary case study for a propane-propene splitter. This confirmed the scope for energy savings, with energy savings of about 37% compared to a vapour-recompression column. First indications suggest that the economics may also be favourable. It was concluded that the platefin design is feasible in principle. However the required hydraulic diameter was larger than currently available in commercial plate-fin heat exchangers.

In this experiment, the stream 1 containing methanol and water was in equimolar condition in which each component consists of 0.5 mole fraction. Then after the heat integration by using adjusting the split ratio on both stream to DCs we find that to level up the energy that been discharged from condenser DC 1 with the energy needed in the reboiler DC 2, we have to split the stream into 0.4607 to DC1 and 0.5930 to DC 2.

1. How to reduce pressure in the DC2? To reduce pressure in the DC2 we adding valve.

2. What are the calculated reflux ratio of DC1 and DC2? The value of reflux ratio of DC1 is 1.26 while for DC2 is 0.834.

3. What is the value of the split ratio of the feed stream for each DC after heat integration? The value of the split ratio of the fed stream for each DC after heat integration is 0.4607 for DC1 and 0.593 for DC2.

4. What is the duty of the condenser of DC1 and the reboiler of DC2 before integrating the heat? The duty of the condenser of DC1 is 5.226X107KJ/h while the reboiler of DC2 is 5.552X107KJ/h before integrating.

5. What is the mole fraction of the bottom product in DC2 before and after integrating the heat? Before Bottom Product Mole Fraction After Mole Fraction 0.0400 0. 9600 Methanol 0.0401 Water 0.9599

Recommendation. The problem need to be understand properly before inserting the value and apparatus in the HYSYS simulation in order to avoid error. Make sure all the indicator for all stream and apparatus turn to green after inserting the value, the indicator show all the value commonly need to be add in the information tables. Use of SRK fluid package. Use of SI unit when evaluating the value.

References. Unit Operation of Chemical Engineering, McGrawhill 7th edition, Warren L Mccabe, Julian C.Smith, Peter Harriot. Process unit operation, CPE521 lecture notes (semester 3).