Introducing vapor recompression mechanism in heat‐integrated distillation column: Impact of internal energy driven intermediate and bottom reboiler

Abstract

A novel combination of internally heat‐integrated distillation column (HIDiC) and vapor recompression column (VRC) with intermediate reboiler (IR) is proposed. Supplying heat at the highest temperature point (i.e., column bottom) of the VRC scheme is not thermodynamically favorable and, therefore, we aim to install the IR for better distribution of heat along the column length, thereby reducing the compressor work. Introducing IR in the combined HIDiC‐VRC system formulates an open‐loop variable manipulation policy to evaluate the comparative impact of internal and external heat sources on bottom liquid reboiling. With internal energy driven bottom reboiler, we further investigate the hybrid HIDiC‐VRCIR column with proposing the two modes of compressor arrangement, namely parallel and series. Finally, a multicomponent distillation system is exampled to show the promising potential of the proposed HIDiC‐VRCIR configurations in improving the energetic and economic performance over the HIDiC‐alone and HIDiC‐VRC schemes with reference to a conventional standalone column. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 61: 118–131, 2015