Koichi Iwakabe1, Keigo Matsuda2, Masaru Nakaiwa2, Kinpei Horiuchi1, Kensuke Iuchi1, Shigenobu Hodumi1, Toshinari Nakanishi3, Takao Ohmori2, Akira Endo2, Takuji Yamamoto2, and Sho Kataoka2. (1) Project Development Department, Maruzen Petrochemical Co., Ltd., Energy-Efficient Chemical Systems Group, Research Institute for Innovation in Sustainable Chemistry, AIST Tsukuba Central 5, 1-1-1, Higashi, Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki, 305-8565, Japan, (2) Energy-Efficient Chemical Systems Group, Research Institute for Innovation in Sustainable Chemistry, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba Central 5, 1-1-1, Higashi, Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki, 305-8565, Japan, (3) R&D Department, Kimura Chemical Plants Co., Ltd., 2-1-2, Kuise-Terajima, Amagasaki-shi, Hyogo, 660-8567, Japan
Distillation is the most widely-used but the most energy-consuming separation method in chemical industries. An internally Heat-Integrated Distillation Columns (HIDiC) is one of the promising alternatives of the conventional distillation processes. HIDiC has a similar structure to a heat exchanger. The rectifying section is contacted with the stripping section through walls in order to allow heat exchange between these two sections. Thus the residual heats in the column can be utilized in itself. Recently, the HIDiC technology attracts a lot of industrial and academic interests, since the energy savings performance has been proved by national projects in Japan. In the previous HIDiC R&D project, a pilot plant of the HIDiC with structured packings was built in 2005. It has been applied to separate twelve-component hydrocarbons mixture, and continuously and steadily operated for more than 1000 hours. However, even plenty of data for the pilot HIDiC were obtained during the operation, analysis and design procedure for the HIDiC have not been thoroughly developed yet. In order to establish a concise model for the packed column type HIDiC, a rate-based model has been modified. Analyses of the data obtained by the pilot HIDiC operations are carried out with the rate-based model for the HIDiC. Here we report significant outcomes from the study.