Sustainable Process Design for Acetone Purification Produced via Dehydrogenation of 2-Propanol

Abstract

Acetone purification is one of the most critical stages of its production process, because a large amount of energy is required. Due to this high energy consumption, the process turns out to be not very sustainable and not friendly to the environment. In this sense, the development of intensified alternatives that minimize energy consumption in this process is of utmost importance. Besides, the safest possible processes are sought, so it is necessary that the control properties of these novel processes be studied at an early design stage. This work proposes two new intensified systems for the purification of acetone; the intensified schemes are a thermally coupled distillation system with a side rectifier and a Petlyuk arrangement. The results indicate that in this type of systems where interconnection flows are used, the magnitudes of these flows have a direct impact on energy consumption, because lower values of interconnection flows as in the case of the thermally coupled system achieve a reduction, whereas higher values as in the case of the Petlyuk system have a negative impact. As for the control properties, the intensified schemes present better values of the condition number with respect to the conventional design, because the interconnection flows reduce the disturbance of the manipulable variables. On the other hand, if the feed is disturbed, the interconnection flows generate an increase in the disturbance in the system, obtaining that the conventional system presents the best values. Therefore, making a balance between the studied designs and looking for a system that presents the best sustainability indicators, the thermally coupled system obtains the best results with a 25.92% energy saving and CO2 emission reduction with respect to the conventional system and acceptable values for the control and safety indexes.

Towards sustainable separation and recovery of dichloromethane and methanol azeotropic mixture through process design, control, and intensification

“…13 The same indicators also were employed by Amezquita-Ortiz et al for assessing the energy-intensified TC and Petlyuk configurations for the purification of acetone. 14 González-Navarrete et al investigated on the application of process intensification such as TC, DWC, and Petyluk, applied to the reactive distillation (RD) for sustainable purification of lactic acid, focusing on the economic viability, environmental impact, and inherent safety as the three main sustainability indicators. 15 Bravo-García et al compared the sustainability of energyintensified TC and DWC for the recovery of valuable components from nylon industry effluents based on similar green metrics such as economics, environmental emissions, safety, and dynamic controllability.…”

“…The same indicators also were employed by Amezquita‐Ortiz et al . for assessing the energy‐intensified TC and Petlyuk configurations for the purification of acetone 14 . González‐Navarrete et al .…”

Analyzing the sustainability of intensified side‐stream extractive distillation for binary azeotropic separation: a comparative study

“…This objective is dependent on the needed recoveries and purities in each product stream, as defined by Eqn. (1).…”

“…A close interaction between the fundamentals of chemical engineering and current concepts of sustainability in process systems engineering is needed, along with a change in the engineering paradigm towards generating products with a minimal impact on the environment. Today, accounting for the sustainability aspects in the early design stage of intensified processes, such as thermally coupled (TC), 1,2 dividing wall column (DWC), 3,4 and side-stream (SS), 5,6 can help distinguish between processes that are easy or difficult to operate. 7 To achieve this, Jiménez-González et al suggested the additional consideration of different 'green metrics', such as environmental, safety, and process control, when designing an intensified process, with aim of achieving a wider goal of environmental sustainability.…”

“…4 In addition to the traditional economic aspects, they also considered the 'green metrics', i.e., environmental, safety, and process control, as suggested by Jiménez-González et al 8 Using the same metrics, Amezquita-Ortiz et al examined the sustainability performance of the TC in comparison to Petlyuk for an acetone purification process. 1 A similar study (this one comparing the sustainability of TC and DWC) was also conducted for recovering valuable compounds from wastewater in the nylon industry. 10 The sustainability performances of TC, DWC, and Petyluk in RD for facilitating a sustainable lactic acid purification steady-state process were investigated by González-Navarrete et al 3 Altogether, these studies highlight the role played by these 'green metrics' (according to Jimenez-Gonzalez et al) 8 as crucial characteristics of a sustainable intensified process, in agreement with several other review papers.…”