Ternary distillation schemes with partial reboiler or partial condenser

Journal Article · Sat Aug 01 04:00:00 EDT 1998 · Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1021/ie980063e· OSTI ID:659065

Agrawal, R; Fidkowski, Z T ^[1]

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1. Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., Allentown, PA (United States)

For the separation of a liquid ternary mixture ABC (A being the most volatile and C the least volatile) into pure product streams, the possibility to further improve the performance of a direct sequence by replacing the total reboiler at the bottom of the first column receiving the ternary feed with a partial reboiler is explored in detail. The use of a partial reboiler leads to four distinct configurations having process streams of different enthalpies or different compositions that can be fed to the second column distilling B from C. At low to moderate values of relative volatilities ({alpha} approximately less than 5), any improvement in the thermodynamic efficiency due to the partial reboiler is small. However, the configuration with two saturated liquid feeds, of different compositions, to the second column can potentially lead to a small (up to 10%) reduction in the heat duty of the second column. At reasonably high values of relative volatility of B with respect to C ({alpha}{sub B} approximately greater than 10), the use of the partial reboiler leads to substantial improvement in the thermodynamic efficiency, and it becomes thermodynamically more efficient to send a saturated liquid feed and a two-phase feed to the second column.

• OSTI ID: 659065
• Journal Information: Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research, Journal Name: Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research Journal Issue: 8 Vol. 37; ISSN IECRED; ISSN 0888-5885
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
DESIGN
DISTILLATION EQUIPMENT
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
HEAT EXCHANGERS
MIXTURES
THERMODYNAMICS
VOLATILITY