In order to explore the advantages of self-heat recuperative distillation(SHRD) process, the design and control of the SHRD process was studied for the separation of n-butanol and iso-butanol mixtures. The economic superiority of SHRD process is presented when a comparison on the total annual cost(TAC) of the conventional distillation process, the vapor recompression distillation process and the SHRD process was made. For the SHRD process, 37.74% and 11.35% savings of TAC can be achieved as compared to the conventional distillation process and vapor recompression distillation process, respectively. The dynamic characteristics of this promising SHRD sequence had been studied, and the dynamic responses demonstrated that 10% changes in both feed flow rate and feed composition can be well handled by the control strategy with dual-temperature control. It is proven that the SHRD system not only can provide economical savings but also can operate normally with good controllability.
Decreasing petroleum reserves and growing alternative fuels requirements have promoted the study of biodiesel production. In this work, two thermally coupled reactive distillation designs for biodiesel production were investigated, and the sensitivity analysis was conducted to obtain the appropriate design values. The thermodynamic analysis and economics evaluation were performed to estimate the superiority of the thermally coupled designs over the base case. The proposed biodiesel production processes were simulated using the simulator Aspen Plus, and calculation results show that the exergy loss and economic cost in the two thermally coupled designs can be greatly reduced. It is found that the thermally coupled side-stripper reactive distillation design provides more economic benefits than the side-rectifier one. The dynamic performance of the thermally coupled side-stripper design was investigated and the results showed that the proposed control structure could effectively handle large feed disturbances.
Li LuminSun LanyiXie XuTian YananShang JianlongTian Yuanyu
