Plantwide design for high-purity formic acid reactive distillation process with dividing wall column and external heat integration arrangements

Abstract

We assessed eight configurations by implementing a dividing wall column (DWC) arrangement and an external heat integration (HI) arrangement for the reduction of energy consumption in the high-purity formic acid (FA) production process. At first, a patented high-purity FA production configuration was adopted and several main process variables were optimized. The optimal configuration was considered the base case for further investigation. The DWC arrangement was applied in the base case configuration to overcome the remixing phenomenon. Next, the external HI arrangement was implemented in those configurations. The simulation results showed that the non-reactive upper DWC between columns C2 and C3 with the HI configuration was the best configuration that provided 46.9% energy saving compared to base case configuration.