(619w) Enhanced Design of Hybrid Distillation Processes for Separation of Biomass Derivatives

Global warming is the current major environmental issue that modern society is facing due to the worldâ??s overdependence on the use of mineral resources as raw materials. Therefore, extensive studies of renewable resources as feedstock to substitute fossils have been carried out. Therefore, the interest of biomass, which is the only renewable resource of fixed carbon, has increased considerably in recent times. Biomass can not only produce conventional hydrocarbon liquid transportation, but also petrochemical products. Several value-added platform chemicals with a range of potential uses from biomass were investigated based on the potential markets, derivatives and the complexity of the synthetic pathways. On the other hand, biomass production on an industrial scale is limited due to the expensive feedstock, low synthetic yield and lack of detailed process design. Several promising hybrid separation processes for recovering valuable biomass derivatives from inexpensive raw materials have been investigated. This work proposes a systematic procedure of enhanced design of hybrid distillation process for separation of biomass derivatives. Initially, enhanced separation process configurations were assessed based on a literature survey, equilibrium distribution and a separation feasibility study. Several configurations were chosen for detailed design and optimization on an industrial scale and compared in terms of the energy requirement, total annual cost (TAC) and total annual CO₂ emission (TAE). All distillation columns were designed with a load of approximately 85% of the load at the flooding point to prevent flooding in the columns. Some preliminary simulations were conducted to determine the initial structures for the extractor and all distillation columns. A rigorous simulation using the simulator, Aspen Plus V8.6 was then conducted to identify the optimal design in terms of minimizing the TAC. The capital cost, total annual operating cost (TOC) and TAC were calculated based on Guthrieâ??s modular method. The results showed that the innovative hybrid distillation configuration could save up the energy requirement and TAC significantly compared to the conventional sequence.