Enhanced methanol recovery and glycerol separation in biodiesel production – DWC makes it happen

Design and optimization of the levulinic acid recovery process from lignocellulosic biomass

“…1) to improve the energy efficiency and reduce the consumption of utilities (Amminudin and Smith, 2001;Long and Lee, 2013a;Long and Lee, 2013b). These reports have shown that DWC systems can achieve energy savings of up to 30% over conventional direct and indirect distillation sequences (Kiss and Ignat, 2012;Long et al, 2013). This is because DWCs can allow reversible splits with no part of the separation being performed twice, which is the main contributor to their superior energy efficiency over other column configurations (Poth et al, 2004).…”

Reactive Distillation Technology

“…Distillation can be combined not only with reaction to form reactive distillation (RD), but also with distillation leading to a dividing-wall column (DWC) that is able to separate three high-purity streams within only one distillation tower (Olujic et al 2003(Olujic et al , 2009van Diggelen et al 2010;Kiss and Bildea 2011;Yildirim et al 2011;Kiss and Ignat 2012). The double integration of reaction with distillation leads to a hybrid setup known as reactive dividing-wall column or R-DWC (Mueller and Kenig 2007;Kiss et al 2009;Hernandez et al 2009;Kiss and Suszwalak 2012;.…”

Design of dividing wall columns for butanol recovery in a thermochemical biomass to butanol process

“…However, these energy and capital costs of the separation section can potentially be improved by utilizing DWCs for biobutanol recovery instead of conventional distillation columns, leading to a reduction in production costs of the process and thus have a significant impact in improving the competitiveness of biobutanol as a gasoline replacement. This application of DWC technology has not been previously investigated for biobutanol recovery from a thermochemical process, and is an interesting area of research as past research has demonstrated the benefits of DWC applications to bioethanol, bioDME and biodiesel production processes [16,17].…”