Dividing wall column: Improving thermal efficiency, energy savings and economic performance

This work aims at investigating the performance improvement of a dividing wall column (DWC) for the separation of a ternary system. It is true that for fractionating a ternary mixture, at least a sequence of two conventional distillation columns is required. To improve energetic and economic potential, and reduce space requirement, two columns are proposed to merge into one shell with a dividing wall. For developing the mathematical model of a distillation column, we consider the effect of heat transfer through the metal wall placed at an intermediated position inside the cylindrical column. The simulated DWC model is verified using the Aspen Plus flowsheet simulator with a wide variety of phase equilibrium models. The superiority of this proposed heat integrated configuration is shown for a ternary hydrocarbon system over a conventional distillation sequence (CDS) in terms of mainly three performance indexes, namely thermal efficiency, energy savings and total annual cost (TAC). It is investigated that the dividing wall distillation scheme can secure a 37.5% energy efficiency, and a 22.6% savings in energy consumption and 23.23% in TAC. The promising performance can also be quantified in terms of a reasonably low payback period of 2.11 years. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.