Adaptation of the multi-effect distillation (MED) process to yield high purity distillate for utilities, refineries and chemical industry

Heat integrated distillation operation

“…[59][60][61][62]). The basic idea of this method is to use the overhead vapor of the one column as the heat source in the reboiler of the next column.…”

Selecting suitable energy-saving distillation schemes: Making quick decisions

“…The major drawback of a conventional distillation column (CDiC) is its low thermodynamic efficiency, requiring high-quality energy in the reboiler while rejecting a similar amount of low-grade heat in the condenser [4]. To improve its energy efficiency, numerous heatintegrated distillation processes have been suggested [5], including heat pump-assisted distillation (HPAD) [1,6], the internally heatintegrated distillation column (HIDiC) [7], the divided-wall column (DWC) [8,9] and multi-effect distillation (MED) [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18], which attempt to lower thermodynamic irreversibility by means of a compressor, intermediate heat exchanger, heat transfer through a dividing wall and extra distillation column, respectively.…”

Design and Optimization of Heat-Integrated Distillation Column Schemes through a New Robust Methodology Coupled with a Boltzmann-Based Estimation of Distribution Algorithm

“…Regarding distillation, it is considered that 3% of the world’s energy is used for this separation technology , as a result of its low thermodynamic efficiency (5–20%), , representing 70% of the total annual costs; in addtion, it has large environmental footprint of carbon dioxide because the heat is generated by the burning of fossil fuels. With the goal of enhancing the thermodynamic efficiency, economy, and environmental impact of the distillation systems, diverse technologies have been presented, such as configurations with interreboilers and intercondensers, heat pump systems, − multieffect columns, − thermally coupled sequences, and recently the internally heat-integrated distillation columns HIDiC. − In particular, HIDiC configurations have shown great potential energy savings compared with other technologies, especially splitting close boiling mixtures, dividing the conventional column into its corresponding rectifying and stripping sections, and generating temperature feasible driving forces between two sections (applying pressure changes) and transferring internal heat from the rectifying section (high pressure) to stripping section (low pressure).…”