Scale Distillation Research Articles

Multiresolution SAR Target Recognition Based on Physical Attention Enhancement and Scale Distillation

Multiresolution SAR Target Recognition Based on Physical Attention Enhancement and Scale Distillation

Design and operation of a packed pilot scale distillation column for tire pyrolysis oil: Towards the recovery of value-added raw materials

This work describes the key features involved in the design and operation of a pilot scale distillation column for the recovery of value-added products from tire pyrolysis oil (TPO), as part of the BLACKCYCLE project. The distillation unit was designed using engineering heuristic rules, simulated distillation (SimDist) data and Aspen Hysys ® modeling. The distillation plant consists of a packed column with a nominal throughput of 20 kg/h, and is classified at the fifth technology readiness level (TRL-5). The commissioning and results of long-term experimental campaigns for validation purposes are also presented. In this way, important information is gathered for the design of larger plants. The distillation unit was tested and validated using TPO produced from a pilot scale continuous single-auger pyrolysis plant. A first distillation was performed yielding a heavy fraction (HF-1) with properties suitable for carbon black production, while the light fraction (LF-1) includes the presence of value-added chemicals such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes (BTEX) and limonene. The LF-1 was also used for a second distillation, producing a stream high in limonene at the bottom (HF-2), and another one high in BTEX compounds at the top (LF-2), which are valuable raw materials for polymer production and petrochemicals, respectively. The key results obtained here are expected to provide an outstanding impetus for the circular economy of complex streams such as end-of-life tires (ELTs) by combining pyrolysis and distillation technologies.

Production of Biodiesel Distillate with Low Monoglycerides for B40 Component by Using Distillation Technique with 1 and 30 Plates Column

One of the quality standard indicators for biodiesel (fatty acid methyl ester, FAME) product specifications is monoglyceride content. Monoglycerides (MG) are residuals of the vegetable oil reactant that do not react completely in the process of making biodiesel, so that they become contaminants in biodiesel. The lower the monoglycerides in the biodiesel product, the better the quality of the biodiesel. In Indonesia’s B40 program, one scenario of adding 10% biodiesel is using FAME distillate on top of 30% regular FAME. The monoglyceride content in the FAME distillate for the B40 mixture was determined not to exceed 0.3 %wt. Distillation technique is one of the effective methods for reducing monoglyceride level in FAME. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of laboratory scale distillation with columns of 1 and 30 plates in reducing the monoglycerides concentrations. Refining FAME by true boiling point (TBP) distillation with 30 plates column under 5 mmHg vacuum at reflux ratio of 1; 2-3 showed that monoglyceride levels decreased significantly at the distillate fraction of 240-325 °C, from an initial level of 0.83 wt.% to 0.17 wt.%. Pour point temperature increased 2 times from the original biodiesel pour point temperature. The pour point temperature of distillate fractions of 240-325 °C, 325-330 °C and 330-335 °C were 12 °C, 21 °C and 24 °C, respectively. At the 340-345 °C distillate fraction, the pour point dropped drastically to 3 °C. By using 1 plate distillation column under operating 5 mmHg vacuum at a recovery rate of 90 %v, monoglycerides with an initial level of 0.83 wt.% can be reduced to 0.59 wt.%. distillate recovery. As the recovery rate of distillation level reduced to 86 vol%, the monoglycerides concentration was 0.29 wt.%.

Tackling Foam-Based Process Disruptions in Spirit Distillation by Thermal Energy Input Adaptations

Process impairing foam formation occurs regularly in batch distillation devices of the spirit industry. It negatively influences process and product quality. Up to now, such foam-related problems have not been in the focus of scientific investigations. This study aimed at preventing impairing foam formations by adapting the thermal energy input in fruit and grain mash distillations in larger scale batch distillations. The results showed that a reduction of the thermal energy input to 43 ± 1 W·L−1 during the initial heating of the mash leads to less flooding of the distillation apparatus and to a higher concentration of lower boiling compounds like methanol, acetaldehyde, and ethyl acetate as well as ethanol in the first fractions of the distillates. A standard process time and less energy consumption could be achieved by increasing the energy input again after prior reduction. However, this led to a reduction of the ethanol concentration in the distillate fractions of up to 4.3%vol, also most severe in the first fractions. A significant influence on analyzed volatile compounds in the distillate besides ethanol could not be detected. This is the first study that uses defined thermal energy input adaptations for foam management in larger scale distillation devices. The results lead the way to a more efficient distillation process with less foam formation.

Influence of Harvest Time, Method of Preparation and Method of Distillation on the Qualitative Properties of Organically Grown and Wild Helichrysum italicum Immortelle Essential Oil

The most important process in immortelle is the extraction of the essential oil by distillation. The chemical properties of the plant depend largely on the cultivation type, climatic conditions and agrotechnical measures. In this work, studies were carried out on organically grown and wild immortelle harvested during the summer (July) and autumn (October) seasons of 2020. Immortelle samples were prepared by drying naturally in two ways: in direct sunlight and in shade. To extract the essential oil, immortelle was distilled in two ways: on an industrial and a laboratory scale. The essential oil was analyzed by gas chromatography to determine the composition and quality of the essential oil. The results of this work showed that the qualitative properties of the essential oil were influenced by the cultivation type, harvesting time, preparation method and distillation method. A higher yield (0.21% ± 0.03) of essential oil was obtained from wild immortelle whereas a better utilization rate (0.38% ± 0.09) of essential oil was obtained from the organically grown immortelle. It was also found that a higher yield of essential oil was obtained from the summer harvest (0.19% ± 0.01) and a higher utilization rate from the autumn harvest (0.33% ± 0.13) with the industrial scale distillation and shade drying. In general, better qualitative properties of immortelle essential oil were obtained from wild immortelle, which was confirmed by a chromatographic analysis and better content of γ-curcumene (16.64% ± 0.30) and neryl acetate (8.15% ± 0.19) and other constituents except α-pinene where organically grown had a higher share (24.27% ± 0.97).

Explainable scale distillation for hyperspectral image classification

The land-covers within an observed remote sensing scene are usually of different scales; therefore, the ensemble of multi-scale information is a commonly used strategy to achieve more accurate scene interpretation; however, this process suffers from being time-consuming. In terms of this issue, this paper proposes a scale distillation network to explore the possibility that single-scale classification network can achieve the same (or even better) classification performance compared with multi-scale one. The proposed scale distillation network consists of a cumbersome multi-scale teacher network and a lightweight single-scale student network. The former is trained for multi-scale information learning, and the latter improves the classification accuracy by accepting the knowledge from the multi-scale teacher network and its true label. The experimental results show the advantages of scale distillation on hyperspectral image classification. The single-scale student network can even achieve higher evaluation accuracy than the multi-scale teacher network. In addition, a faithful explainable scale network is designed to visually explain the trained scale distillation network. The traditional deep neural network is a black-box and lacks interpretability. The explanation of the trained network can explore more hidden information from the predictions. We visually explain the prediction results of scale distillation network, and the results show that the explainable scale network can more precisely analyze the relationship between the learned scale features and the land-cover categories. Moreover, the possible application of the explainable scale network on classification is further discussed in this study.

Exploiting Full-Scale Feature for Remote Sensing Object Detection Based on Refined Feature Mining and Adaptive Fusion

Object detection for remote sensing images remains a challenging problem. In this paper, we proposed an effective remote sensing detection network (RS-Net) based on YOLOv4, which greatly solves the difficulties of remote sensing object detection. Center to our RS-Net is coarse-grained highlighting (CGH), fine-grained mining (FGM) and scale distillation (SD) modules. Through a fusion of original and complementary feature, CGH alleviates the dilemma of object semantic extraction caused by the variability of background information. Besides, FGM is designed to further enhance the feature extraction ability, which is implemented by prominent branch and ensemble branch in parallel. The former highlights the object semantics of being suppressed due to its high similarity with background. The latter mines object information as a whole to reduce the interference from noise. Finally, SD significantly improves the richness of small object information in shallow layer. Experiments conducted over DOTA and NWPU-VHR datasets confirm that the proposed RS-Net achieves competitive detection performance compared with state-of-the-art detectors.

NMR spectroscopy goes mobile: Using NMR as process analytical technology at the fume hood.

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is potentially a very powerful process analytical technology (PAT) tool as it gives an atomic resolution picture of the reaction mixture without the need for chromatography. NMR is well suited for interrogating transient intermediates, providing kinetic information via NMR active nuclei, and most importantly provides universally quantitative information for all species in solution. This contrasts with commonly used PAT instruments, such as Raman or Flow-infrared (IR), which requires a separate calibration curve for every component of the reaction mixture. To date, the large footprint of high-field (≥400 MHz) NMR spectrometers and the immobility of superconducting magnets, coupled with strict requirements for the architecture for the room it is to be installed, have been a major obstacle to using this technology right next to fume hoods where chemists perform synthetic work. Here, we describe the use of a small, lightweight 60 MHz Benchtop NMR system (Nanalysis Pro-60) located on a mobile platform, that was used to monitor both small and intermediate scale Grignard formation and coupling reactions. We also show how low field NMR can provide a deceptively simple yes/no answer (for a system that would otherwise require laborious off-line testing) in the enrichment of one component versus another in a kilogram scale distillation. Benchtop NMR was also used to derive molecule specific information from Flow-IR, a technology found in most manufacturing sites, and compare the ease at which the concentrations of the reaction mixtures can be derived by NMR versus IR.

Identifying the stabilising regions of PI controller based on frequency specifications for a lab scale distillation column

The aim of the study is to design and implement decentralised PI controller for a lab scale distillation column based on the frequency specifications. Designing an effective PI controller for an MI...

Approach Study for Mass Balance of Pesticide Residues in Distillers' Stillage along with Distillate and Absence Verification of Pesticides in Distilled Spirits from Pilot-Scale of Distillation Column.

Herein, contaminants remaining in distillate and distillers’ stillage were quantitatively measured after distillation. After rice bran powder was contaminated with 10 ppm of lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd) or 0.02–1.27 ppm of five pesticides (terbufos, fenthion, iprobenfos, flutolanil, and ethoprophos) followed by fermentation, single-stage distillation was performed. In the obtained distillate, no Pb or Cd was found, as expected. However, when the pesticides were added as contaminants, trace–0.05 ppm of some pesticides were detected in the distillate, possibly due to the high vapor pressure (e.g., that of ethoprophos) and contamination amount (e.g., that of flutolanil, terbufos, and fenthion). In contrast, none of the contaminating pesticides were observed in the distilled spirits when a fermented liquefaction contaminated with 0.04–4 ppm of six pesticides (fenthion, terbufos, ethoprophos, iprobenfos, oxadiazon, and flutolanil) was distilled using a pilot-plant scale distillation column, indicating that the pesticides hardly migrate to the distilled spirits.

Drinking seawater: Investigations into desalination

Water is essential to living organisms, yet only 0.02% of this natural resource is accessible as a direct source of fresh- and drinking water. South Africa, being a coastal country, is an ideal candidate for the use of treated sea water as an alternative source of fresh water. Desalination is the process in which dissolved salts are removed from saline water, forming fresh water. However, desalination processes are costly and are often energy and water intensive. This project considers the economic feasibility, environmental feasibility and viability of a differed distillation column that can be used as a desalination unit. A laboratory-scale distillation column was modified to provide energy to the unit with the purpose of decreasing the cost, time and energy requirements of the desalination (distillation) process. Current technologies such as Reverse Osmosis and Multi staged flash distillation are costly, time and energy intensive. In this work, the proposed desalination unit is a findenser in place of the traditional Liebig condenser to provide an environmentally friendly and cost effective alternative. It is also compact and portable which makes it favorable for domestic use. The small scale experiments performed using the Liebig condenser showed an average water recovery of 1.38 x 10-3 L/min and the scaled-up experiments show an average water recovery of 3.53 x 10-3 L/min, which resulted in an efficiency of 91% and 93%. Removal of salt water using the lab scale distillation unit requires 2 hours and 13 minutes to distil 500 mL. The salt solution reaches a maximum temperature of 105°C. The findenser is the more favourable cooling method due to its portability and conservation of water. Our results further show that the maximum capacity of this lab-scale unit is 3 liters of fresh water per day, over a 12 hour operational period.

A new approach for profile interpretation of a tray-type distillation column using gamma-ray scan and template matching techniques

Gamma-ray scanning is a well-known technique for inspection of distillation columns. A fast and accurate identification of the malfunctions or defects strongly depends on the profile interpretation procedure. By using this technique, interpretation of scan profiles is not always easy and often needs experienced staffs as well as a long enough time for efficient construing after doing scan work. In the present work, a method has been proposed and implemented to develop the interpretation procedure of the scan profile without involving technical staffs. The proposed approach includes gamma-ray scanning in combination with template matching technique. The method has been validated through the several experiments carried out to obtain different scan profiles for a typical laboratory scale distillation column. In this regard, an appropriate mechanical system along with associated electronics was developed to perform the experiments. A software was also implemented based on the method which provide some controls on scanning procedure in addition to displaying the defects types and locations on the screen. The results revealed that the commonly occurred malfunctions such as foaming, flooding, and damaged tray etc. in the column have been accurately interpreted and automatically reported in a short time using this method. Overall results also showed that the proposed method works almost independent of the scanning speed in the range of 5 to 30 mm/sec.

The Effect of Saccharomyces cerevisiae Inoculum Concentration On Bioetanol Production From Cocoa Peel (Theobroma cacao L)

This study aims to determine the effect of S. cerevisiae inoculum concentration on the ethanol content produced in the fermentation process of cocoa pods. The study design used a completely randomized design (CRD). Parameters observed were alcohol content, reducing sugar content and pH. The research was carried out in the laboratory scale and pilot scale. The laboratory scale consists of preliminary and major research. Preliminary research aims to find the optimum concentration of H2SO4 to produce the highest reducing sugar. The main research phase, namely hydrolysis using optimum H2SO4 from preliminary research and fermentation using S. cerevisiae inoculum with variations in inoculum concentrations of 0%, 1%, 3%, 5% and 7% (v / v). The aim of The pilot scale is producing bioethanol. Fermentation was carried out for six days at a temperature of 28-300 C, observations carried out every two days. Measurement of alcohol content using the titration method, reducing sugar content by the Somogyi-Nelson method, and the pH measured by the indicator pH. Pilot scale measurements were carried out by distillation and GC-MS test. Average alcohol content, reducing sugar content, and pH were 23.73%, 90.20 µg / ml, and 4.4. From the pilot scale distillation results, 87.6 ml of distillate were obtained from 1L of cocoa pods substrate. GC-MS test results showed that in distillate ethanol contained 74.944%. The results confirmed that cocoa pods have the potential as bioethanol raw materials.
 Keywords: Bioethanol, Somogyi-Nelson, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, H2SO4

Simulation and Control of Bench-Scale Distillation Columns Using a Switched Reflux Strategy

The undeniable importance of industrial distillation has motivated hundreds, if not thousands of theoretical and applied research projects. A considerable amount of those projects has used a bench or pilot scale distillation columns to have experimental confirmation of the proposed innovations. Nevertheless, the automatic control of bench scale distillation columns is not as straightforward as it appears to be, due to the low magnitude of the involved material flows. To precisely manipulate low magnitude flows, special low flow control valves are necessary; this results in high instrumentation costs which are not desirable at bench nor pilot scale. This work treats the simulation and control of a low cost, bench scale column with an electrically heated reboiler and water-cooled condenser. It uses a version of an on-off valve as an actuator to control the distillate composition of the desired product. The use of a solenoid valve results in a discontinuous reflux flow, which changes the continuous dynamical model of the distillation column to a piecewise dynamical one. In other words, it can be assumed that the column switches between zero and infinite reflux ratio instantly. The resulting piecewise dynamic model is studied and analyzed, and because of this analysis, the dynamic implications of this strategy in the operation of the column are used to tune a PID-PWM controller and to formulate general recommendations to attain an efficient composition control in the distillate.

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Enhancing the quadratic problem solver in the pilot scale distillation control systems using different optimization methods

Industrial control system (ICS) encompasses the several types of the control systems which is placed in the various applications like industrial production, distributed control systems, small control configuration system and so on. The ICS developing process the model predictive controller (MPC) is utilized because of the easy concepts and controller tuning package. At the time of ICS implementation process, it consists of computing power problem which leads to reduce the entire ICS power. To reduce the problem present in the MPC, it has been optimized by utilizing MPC and the quadratic problem is overcome by applying the several quadric methods such as, sequential quadratic programming, barrier function and iterative interior point quadratic optimization are used. From the optimized controller system, the pilot scale distillation control system is developed and the performance of the proposed system is developed using state space model which is analyzed in terms of the error metrics and mean cost metrics.

Development of a unique modular distillation column using 3D printing

3D printing is recently used in many fields of technology, from medical science to aerospace and food products. In some cases, this technique is faster and increases the design flexibility in comparison with conventional machining. In this article, the design and manufacturing of a modular distillation column are presented using 3D printing. The flexibility and freedom in 3D model designs and the challenges for developing a small scale distillation column are demonstrated. The column was designed in a coil shape with modular structure to overcome the printing area limitation of the used 3D printer. The chemical compatibility of the printed polymer with several common solvents was examined. A 3D printable packing, and a commercially available stainless steel spring packing were used in the distillation. The column was used to distill a binary mixture of hexane+cyclohexane in full reflux and continuous mode. The heat loss of the column was also measured at the boiling points of hexane and cyclohexane. The composition of reflux and boilup streams were analyzed online using a gas chromatograph equipped with two sampling valves. The temperature of the vapor phase was measured at the top (vapor outlet) and bottom (boilup) of the column.

Relative Efficiency of Esterified Rubber Seed Oil in a Hydrodynamic Cavitation Reactor and Purification via Distillation Column

High local pressure and temperature can be generated by the sudden collapse of cavities which contributed to minimising the mass transfer between methanol and rubber seed oil phase in an acid esterification pretreatment process. The reaction is carried out in a 50 L/batch pilot scale reactor with an induced pressure of 13.5 bar around the orifice plate to generate the cavitational field. The double diaphragm pump is the key component to dissipate the energy in the hydrodynamic cavitation process. Four orifice plates with the various designs were studied for hydrodynamic cavitation process. In this regard, cavitation number effect, concentration effect and relative esterified efficiencies for all orifice plates were studied on various upstream pressure. It has been found that the plate with 21 holes of 1mm diameter with an inlet pressure of 3 bar gave a comprehensive result for the relative esterified efficiency of 0.005x10 -5 J -1 . The relative efficiency of hydrodynamic cavitation process is fourfold higher than the mechanical stirring conventional process which makes it energy efficient. The final product from hydrodynamic cavitation process was purified via pilot scale distillation column of 5 L/batch capacity to further commence the transesterification process. The effects of temperature, pressure and packing height on distillation have been studied. The purified product properties such as moisture content, acid value and higher heating value were measured. It was found that purified product can be utilised for transesterification reaction for biodiesel production as a greener fuel.

Improved productivity of the MSF (multi-stage flashing) desalination plant by increasing the TBT (top brine temperature)

The evaporating process is very important in the system concerned with liquid foods, seawater distillation and wastewater treatment, which is to concentrate the aqueous solution by evaporating the pure water usually at a vacuum state. In general, the liquid concentration is performed through the membrane, electro-dialysis, and evaporation; the former are separation process and the latter is the phase change process. In this study, only the thermal process was treated for evaluating the specific energy consumption by changing the operating conditions of an existing MSF (multi-stage flashing) desalination plant, which is still dominant for a large scale distillation plant. This study shows the quantitative energy saving strategy in sweater distillation process and, additionally, indicates that the performance of the multi-stage evaporating system can be increased with the elevation of a TBT (top brine temperature). The calculated results were based on the operating data of the currently installed plants and suggests the alternative to improve the performance of the MSF desalination plant, which means that the energy saving can be achieved only by changing the operating conditions of the existing MSF plants.

Purification of tetrahydrofuran from its aqueous azeotrope by extractive distillation: Pilot plant studies

Tetrahydrofuran (THF) is an important chemical which is useful in various applications. THF forms an azeotrope with water which is homogeneous and minimum boiling. Several techniques have been used for breaking this azeotrope including membranes, pressure swing distillation and extractive distillation. This work explores the possibility of using extractive distillation for dehydration and purification of tetrahydrofuran. Pilot scale distillation column experiments are presented in batch, semi batch and continuous mode using 1,2-propanediol and dimethyl sulfoxide as the entrainers. Use of dimethyl sulfoxide helps produce greater than 99% pure THF by mass.

Gamma-ray CT as a complementary technique for structural inspection of tray-type distillation columns

Gamma-ray scanning method has been already used for troubleshooting analysis of the distillation columns in industries. The obtained density profile in this method will give useful information about either structure or process of the column. However, in situations such as damaged tray, the damage severity cannot be identified using conventional gamma-ray scanning method. In this study, gamma-ray CT technique has been investigated as a complementary technique for structural inspection of a tray-type distillation column. So, a laboratory scale distillation column containing damaged tray and overlapped downcomers along with a transportable tomographic system have been simulated using MCNPX Monte Carlo code. Image contrast higher than 75% was obtained for reconstructed results of simulated data. Furthermore, the damage fraction calculated from reconstruction result showed a difference about 3% in comparison with its true value. To validate the simulations, an experiment was performed on a Lab-scale distillation column for inspection of downcomers overlap which leads to unexpected peaks in the obtained density profile. A reconstruction error of less than 7.5% was obtained for both experiment and simulation reconstruction results. Simulation and experimental image reconstruction results show that structural details of the column inside can be effectively determined using gamma-ray tomographic scan method. The overall results are indicative of the fact that gamma-ray CT technique can be efficiently used as a complementary technique for structural inspection of tray-type distillation columns.