Heat Integrated Reactive Distillation Column (r-HIDiC): Implementing a New Technology Distillation

Currently, several heat integration techniques have been studied, e.g. HIDiC column, showing a diminution in energy consumption in relation to conventional distillation column. In this work, an approach for process intensification in distillation columns is studied by merging both reactive distillation and heat integrated distillation column principles, resulting in the heat integrated reactive distillation column (r-HIDiC). A simulation study has been performed in order to compare the performance of reactive distillation column and r-HIDiC column in the synthesis of tert-amyl methyl ether (TAME). It was found that due to internal energy integration, the r-HIDiC column achieves a better performance with energy saving around 8%. In addition, it can be seen that the possibility of r-HIDiC column to operate at different pressures between the rectifying and stripping sections permits to overcome separation limitations resulting from presence of azeotropes.