The Study On Dividing Wall Column In Petrochemical Industry

Distillation as the main tool of petroleum and chemical industries,is an energy-intensive process.Therefore,the inital problem of distillation is to improve the energy efficiency in a short or long term.Recently,the development of petroleum and chemical industries is depression,so energy-saving has become a common means to improve the competitiveness of enterprises.Research and industrial applications have proved that the dividing wall column(DWC)as an advanced process integration and intensification technology has a great potential in reducing energy consumption and equipment investment.The application of DWC in petrochemical industry will play a very important role in energy-saving and improving the competitiveness of enterprises.So this paper is focused on the studies of DWC in different petrochemical processes.The dehydrogenation of isobutene isobutene(ADHO)separation process,the recovering of liquefied petroleum gas(LPG)from refinery fuel gas process,the reforming C9 to separation of 1,2,3-trimethylbenzene process,and the acrylic acid production process were simulated in this paper.And the dividing wall column technology was applied to these four processes.Each process is optimized by optimization algorithm to obtain the optimal design parameters.In addition,the operating costs,capital costs and total annual costs are also calculated to evaluate the feasibility and economic potential of the proposed processes.ADHO separation process with DWC can achieve 11.74% saving of TAC,and the purity of isobutene is 40% with the yield of C4 of more than 99%;The recovery of LPG from refinery fuel gas process can achieve 55.50% saving of TAC,and the purity of liquefied petroleum gas is 96% with the total yield of more than 90%;The reforming C9 to separation of 1,2,3-trimethylbenzene process can achieve 15.90% saving of TAC,and the purity of 1,2,3-trimethylbenzene is 99% with the yield of more than 98%,with a 40% purity of enriched sym-trimethylbenzene;The acrylic production process can save TAC up to 24.66%,in which the acrylic purity is more than 99.5%.The results showed that there was a great economic potential for all of these four proposed processes with DWC,which can provide a guidance and reference for the industrial application.The gas split ratio's deviation from design value will lead to the increase of energy consumption and unsatisfactory product,and it is also difficult to be controlled with current control level.Therefore,the problem of gas split ratio in DWC is considered in dimension sizing state.At the end of this paper,the design of the packing column was described,and the calculation of the pressure drop balance was introduced in details,whicn can be regarded as a reference for the industrial application of packing dividing wall column...