Abstract
BackgroundA response surface analysis was performed to study the effect of the composition and feeding thermal conditions of ternary mixtures on the number of theoretical stages and the energy consumption of Petlyuk columns. A modification of the pre-design algorithm was necessary for this purpose.ResultsThe modified algorithm provided feasible results in 100% of the studied cases, compared with only 8.89% for the current algorithm. The proposed algorithm allowed us to attain the desired separations, despite the type of mixture and the operating conditions in the feed stream, something that was not possible with the traditional pre-design method. The results showed that the type of mixture had great influence on the number of stages and on energy consumption. A higher number of stages and a lower consumption of energy were attained with mixtures rich in the light component, while higher energy consumption occurred when the mixture was rich in the heavy component.ConclusionsThe proposed strategy expands the search of an optimal design of Petlyuk columns within a feasible region, which allow us to find a feasible design that meets output specifications and low thermal loads.
Highlights
A response surface analysis was performed to study the effect of the composition and feeding thermal conditions of ternary mixtures on the number of theoretical stages and the energy consumption of Petlyuk columns
The use of non-conventional distillation columns, such as those suggested by Petlyuk et al [1], can generate significant savings in energy consumption and thereby significantly reduce the capital costs compared to conventional sequences
This paper proposes modifying the algorithm used in the pre-design of Petlyuk-type columns for distillation of ternary mixtures so that the pre-design stage is always successful and guarantees feasible results
Summary
A response surface analysis was performed to study the effect of the composition and feeding thermal conditions of ternary mixtures on the number of theoretical stages and the energy consumption of Petlyuk columns. The use of non-conventional distillation columns, such as those suggested by Petlyuk et al [1], can generate significant savings in energy consumption and thereby significantly reduce the capital costs compared to conventional sequences. The use of thermally coupled columns has decreased the costs of equipment and energy consumption by up to 30% [2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Configurations c) and d) are employed frequently in the oil industry for the separation of air by cryogenic distillation (for example, a side rectifier is used for the recovery of argon). The e) configuration is a fully thermally coupled column, known as a Petlyuk column [4,5,7,8,9,10,11]. The f ) configuration corresponds to the divided wall column [10], known as Kaibel column; these columns are currently used in the industry [11]
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