AN Weizhong, LIN Zixin, JIANG Yue, et al. Design and optimization of an internally heat integrated reactive distillation column for ethylene glycol production[J]. CIESC Journal, 2013, (12): 4634-4640.
DOI:
AN Weizhong, LIN Zixin, JIANG Yue, et al. Design and optimization of an internally heat integrated reactive distillation column for ethylene glycol production[J]. CIESC Journal, 2013, (12): 4634-4640.DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.0438-1157.2013.12.054.
Design and optimization of an internally heat integrated reactive distillation column for ethylene glycol production
The problem to seek further heat integration for the hydration of ethylene oxide by reactive distillation (RD) to produce ethylene glycol
which involves reactions with highly thermal effect
was investigated.An innovative process
internally heat-integrated RD column (R-HIDiC)
was proposed to maximize energy efficiency of the system
in which the reactive section and stripping section was partitioned into two parts with different operating pressures so that the internal heat transfer between reactive section and stripping section was allowed.Steady-state simulations based on Aspen Plus software were performed to investigate the feasibility of internal heat integration
and an energy integration design without the need of reboiler was provided by optimizing the heat distribution in R-HIDiC.The results obtained demonstrated that
comparing with the conventional design
the proposed R-HIDiC design did not need a reboiler
thus
the total energy input can be supplied by the heat of reaction of the hydration of ethylene oxide and the electricity power of compressor
which leads to a reduction of the operating and total cost by 47.2% and 39.1%