Process Optimization of Heat-Integrated Extractive Dividing-Wall Columns for Energy-Saving Separation of CO₂ and Hydrocarbons

Abstract

Large amounts of gas mixtures of CO 2 and hydrocarbons are generated in the CO 2 -enhanced oil recovery (CO 2 -EOR) process, and their separation is very challenging due to the formation of a minimum-boiling azeotrope of CO 2 and ethane. Hence, in this work, an intensified triple-column extractive distillation (ITCED) process, based on the triple-column extractive distillation process proposed by Ebrahimzadeh et al. [Appl. Therm. Eng. 2016, 96, 39−47], is developed and optimized using a mixedinteger nonlinear programming (MINLP) method in terms of the minimal total annual cost (TAC) to separate the CO 2 −hydrocarbons mixture effectively. Furthermore, based on ITCED, two types of extractive dividing-wall column (EDWC) processes, i.e., vapor split EDWC (VSEDWC) and liquid split EDWC (LSEDWC), are developed and optimized. Then, the thermodynamic efficiency and CO 2 emissions of these processes are calculated to evaluate their energy efficiency and environmental impact, showing the advantage of LSEDWC over the other processes. Finally, a heat-integrated LSEDWC (HI-LSEDWC) process is proposed and demonstrated to be able to substantially improve the original tripe-column extractive distillation process with a 33.

Revisiting the binary azeotropic separation containing tetrahydrofuran and ethanol: Design and control of extractive distillation using dimethyl sulfoxide as alternative solvent

“…The proposed process in this study contains different discrete and continuous decision variables, which forms a mixed integer nonlinear programming problem (MINLP) that is difficult to handled by using the conventional sequential iterative (SI) or sequential quadratic programming (SQP) algorithm . To overcome this issue, various stochastic optimisation algorithms can be employed such as genetic algorithm (GA) ( Sun et al, 2020 ), mesh adaptive direct search (MADS) algorithm ( Li et al, 2020 ;Yang et al, 2022b ), particle swarm optimisation (PSO) , and simulated annealing (SA) algorithm ( Yang and Ward, 2018 ). Among the different optimisation algorithm, PSO has a shorter computational times, which makes it a very popular approach for optimising advanced distillation-based processes (e.g.…”

Energy-Efficient Hybrid Reactive-Extractive Distillation with a Preconcentration Column for Recovering Isopropyl Alcohol and Diisopropyl Ether from Wastewater: Process Design, Optimization, and Intensification

“…The second contribution of this work is to explore the possibility of improving the energy consumption and TAC through process optimization, which was proven to reduce the energy consumption efficiently and lower the environmental emission, as evident in a handful number of recent studies for reactive or extractive-based distillation. ,− In this work, the double-column reactive-extractive distillation (DCRED) with a preconcentration column consists of various types of decision variables, such as discrete or continuous, which translate to a mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem that cannot be effectively handled using the sequence quadratic programming (SQP) optimization method or the traditional SI as employed in most of the existing studies (Table ). − Various stochastic optimization algorithms have been devised to overcome this issue, such as the nondominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA), , mesh adaptive direct search (MADS) algorithm, and particle swarm optimization (PSO), to tackle these MINLP problems. Among the different optimization algorithms, the application of PSO for optimizing a hybrid RED is less studied.…”

Extractive Dividing-Wall Column Distillation with a Novel Control Structure Integrating Pressure Swing and Pressure Compensation

“…Extractive dividing-wall column (E-DWC) is a promising process intensification technology to achieve lower cost by improving process efficiency, reducing equipment size and energy consumption. ,, However, Wu et al examined the economics of three different chemical separations in a critical assessment of the applicability of E-DWC. They pointed out that, for new systems, E-DWC cannot guarantee its superiority in economics over conventional extractive distillation.…”