| Contrast sharply to the conventional distillation process, the reactive distillation process is an efficient industrial process that combines the reaction and separation process together. It brings out a great strengthening method for the separation process of a reversible reaction. Through the process intensification design methods, the reactive distillation process can offer more benefits in utility consumption and capital investment, with the operating performance been improved. Both internal heat integration and internal mass integration should be considered during process intensification.According to the thermal heat released by the reactions, the reactive distillation columns could be divided into three types:those with high thermal effect, those with negligible thermal effect, and those with low thermal effect. For the reactive distillation columns with highly thermal effect, the method of intensifying internal heat integration should be mainly considered when use process intensification theory. For the reactive distillation columns with negligible thermal effect, the method of intensifying internal mass integration should be mainly considered. For the reactive distillation columns with low thermal effect, both the methods of intensifying internal heat integration and intensifying internal mass integration should be considered. In the area of the research on the reactive distillation columns with highly thermal effect, lots of scholars have been obtained considerable achievement. However, when it comes to the reactive distillation columns with negligible or low thermal effect, inferential conclusion has not been made. According to the former researches, there are mainly four methods when considering process intensification of a reactive distillation system. That is to superimpose the reactive stages onto the stripping section, to superimpose the reactive stages onto the rectifying section, to relocate the feed location and to redistribute the catalyst among reactive stages. In this paper, the effect of process intensification to the static and dynamic characteristics of the reactive distillation columns with low thermal effect would be explored, through the mentioned four steps. The dimethyl carbonate reactive distillation column is taken as an example. The whole process of the reactive distillation column is simulated by the chemical software of Aspen Plus.For the dimethyl carbonate reactive distillation column, process intensification would be very helpful to the substantial reduction of energy requirement. Additionally, a favorable effect is observed upon the process dynamics and operability. This conclusion is also applicable to the most reactive distillation column with low thermal effect. These striking outcomes manifest that process intensification should be considered in the synthesis and design of reactive distillation columns with low thermal effect in the practical industry. |
