Distillation section

There are several types of distillation processes, the most commonly used of which is the distillation process for a binary system. In this process, heat is supplied at the feed heater and reboiler, and the overhead stream is cooled at a condenser. Almost all of the supplied heat at the reboiler in the conventional distillation process is discarded in the overhead condenser. Conventional energy savings in the distillation processes were fundamentally attained as a result of heat recovery duty in the feed heater being maximized by using the heat of the bottom stream, which enabled the utility (steam or hot oil) rate to the feed heater to be reduced. “Self-heat recuperation technology” (SHRT) was adopted to achieve further energy saving in the distillation process, whereby two compressors are installed in the overhead vapor line, consisting of the reflux and the overhead product streams. A compressor (compressor-1) treats the reflux stream and the other compressor (compressor-2) treats the overhead stream. The reboiler duty is supplied by the recuperated heat of the discharged stream from compressor-1 and the feed heater duty is supplied by that from compressor-2, by adiabatic compressions. It was able to be determined that the advanced process based on self-heat recuperation (SHR) could reduce the energy consumption significantly by using the recuperated heat of the overhead vapor.