Mastering Heat Pumps Selection for Energy Efficient Distillation

Abstract

A practical selection scheme of energy efficient distillation technologies is proposed, with a special focus on heat pumps. The most promising technologies selected are: vapour compression, mechanical or thermal vapour recompression, absorption, compression-resorption and thermo-acoustic heat pumps, heat integrated distillation column, cyclic distillation, Kaibel and dividing-wall column. The scheme considers the type of separation tasks, the product flow and purity specifications, the boiling point differences (?Tb), the reboiler duty (Qreb) and its temperature level (Treb) as the main technology selection criteria. The proposed scheme allows considerable savings in time and resources allocated for the selection of eco-efficient chemical processes.