Synthesis of new thermally coupled distillation systems by heat integration

Abstract

The synthesis of new thermally coupled (NTC) distillation systems via Heat Integration (HI) is presented in this paper. The synthesized NTC distillation systems have a lower number of thermal couplings than the original thermally coupled configurations (OTC). They have the same number of column units as well as the same number of column sections as the OTCs. They are expected to have the similar savings on both energy and capital costs than the OTC configurations. However, they have an improved operability because of the reduced number of two-way thermal coupling streams than OTCs. Systematic synthesis of the NTC distillation systems for an n-component mixture is presented. The possible thermodynamically equivalent structures of the NTC systems are also produced.