Computer Simulation For Separating BTX Process By Dividing Wall Column

Distillation separation is one of the most important unit operations in thechemical industry, especially oil-refining industry, and in all the separation processes,it is the oldest and the most mature technology. However, it is also the unit operationsof requiring the most amount of energy in the whole process and in the chemicalindustry. With global energy short, developing new separation technology andinventing devices, which reduce the energy consumption and investment, havebecome an inevitable trend in chemical industry.By using chemical process simulation software–ChemCAD, the process ofmixture feed of separating Benzene, Toluene and Xylene (BTX) is simulated,optimized and analyzed in this paper. Mixed materials are simulated and optimized bycomputer, which is steady-state, under the condition of Dividing Wall Columnseparation technology and conventional distillation separation system. In thesimulation process, analyzing and optimizing the number of theory-stage, feedingposition, Operating pressure and temperature, the position of side-draw, the split ratioof vapor phase, the split ratio of liquid phase etc. will be obtained and get the bestvalues. From analyzing and comparing the report of simulating and optimizing, wefind that reboiler duty of Dividing Wall Column, which is27.61%, is less than that ofconventional distillation columns, and all products’ quality meet separationrequirements. Through the simulation of Dividing Wall Column separating themixture with three components, we obtained best values of split ratio of vapor phaseand split ratio of liquid phase, and they are0.4-0.46and0.6-0.7separately. We foundDividing Wall column technology is adopted properly under the condition that theproportion of middle component among mixture is0.50—0.75. In order to researchstability and operation of Dividing Wall Column, dynamic simulation analysis is oprocessed.The simulation research on Dividing Wall Column provides certain theoreticalprinciple for developing and applying Dividing Wall Column technology. Meanwhile,it proposed the new thinking for thermal coupled processes and energy-savingemission reduction technology.