Article Highlights• Using additional turbine to produce domestic electricity from process stream in the column • Reducing the energy consumption from using domestic electricity and reducing CO 2 emission • The new design is promising with important amount of energy reduction and CO 2 emission • Equations were derived in detail to prove the process feasibility • Distillation to feed ratio and reflux ratio were fully investigated as primary variables Abstract Distillation is a process that consumes an extensive amount of energy and emits an enormous amount of CO 2 . It is attractive to reduce the energy consumption and CO 2 emission for distillation. A new design of distillation is proposed by adding turbines in the vapor process streams before the condenser and after a reboiler to produce domestic electricity. As a result, this new design helps in reducing energy consumption and CO 2 emission. The key variables are the distillate to feed ratio and the reflux ratio because they are the direct factors that control the vapor flow rates supplying the turbines. The distillation of an alkane mixture of C4-C8 commonly found in a petroleum refinery was used as a test model to prove the process feasibility. The energy consumption and CO 2 emission of the new process are reduced to 0.93-0.96 and 0.89-0.90 of the conventional process, respectively. This new design increases process efficiency in terms of second law efficiency by reducing the entropy generation from the conventional distillation at low distillate to feed ratios and reflux ratios. The distillation with additional turbines is promising to reduce energy consumption and CO 2 emission and to increase process efficiency.
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