Greater sustainability can be achieved by decreasing the production costs, energy consumption, equipment size, and environmental impact as well as improvement of the raw material yields, remote control, and process flexibility. Process intensification (PI) as the main route for improving the process performance is used widely in heat transfer, reactions, separation, and mixing, which results in plant compactness, cleanliness, and energy efficiency. Some of the main intensified separation processes and improvement mechanisms are reviewed briefly with the main focus on the PI of distillation processes, which are the most important separation methods. In addition to these technologies, the potential and reliability of reactive separation processes are addressed briefly, which will enable higher efficiency and capacity.
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