Economic optimization of a reactive distillation column with multiple reactive sections for silane production

Abstract

Solar cell manufacturing is based on solar grade silicon which can be obtained using Silane as precursor instead of Trichlorosilane in the well-known Siemen’s process. The silane production can be done in a reactive distillation (RD) column in which reaction and separation take place simultaneously. The typical RD column has one reactive section, but in a recent work ( Zang et al., 2017 ) it has been shown that an RD column with multiple reactive sections can enhance the internal mass integration and/or energy interaction between the reactions and the separation of Silane. Therefore, this work aims to optimize an RD column for silane production with up to three reaction sections. The number and location of the reactive sections are found after solving a proposed global stochastic optimization framework based on a modified Simulated Annealing Algorithm. The results show that the increase in the number of reactive sections does not necessarily mean and reduction in the cost of the process.