Design of Reaction Region of Reactive Dividing Wall Column Based on Cross-Wall Heat Transfer

Abstract

The reactive dividing wall column (RDWC) is a column structure that couples a reactive distillation and dividing wall column. It has become a research hotspot because of its remarkable advantages in energy consumption. Most RDWCs ignore the possibility of cross-wall heat transfer. For the RDWC, the effect of reaction heat is also ignored. In this work, the reaction of methyl acetate with butanol was studied, and Aspen is used to study the effect of the reaction heat and reaction region length on the cross-wall heat transfer. The results show that compared with the RDWC with an adiabatic cross-wall, the RDWC with cross-wall heat transfer can save 3.2% energy. Cross-wall heat transfer could achieve reactants conversion of 99.4%. From the perspective of energy saving maximization, the double reaction region is set. The research results show that the RDWC with cross-wall heat transfer in the double reaction region can save 4.2% energy compared with the cross-wall insulation.