(391a) Electrification of Distillation for Decarbonization

Distillation is one of the largest energy consumers in the chemical industry. Currently, distillation columns are largely driven by utility steam generated by the combustion of fossil fuels. To decarbonize distillation columns, heat pumps have become an effective way. Heat pump is usually electrically-driven so it can be integrated with renewable power. In this work, we have designed several distillation configurations to separate chemical components with either azeotropic or zeotropic properties. The implementation of electrical equipment also brings additional economic costs. Therefore, the evaluation of additional capital cost versus additional saving in operating cost should be considered. In addition, the use of heat pumps can generate additional process control issues, thus we compared the dynamics and control performances of both thermal- and electrical-driven processes. For specific systems, the electrical distillation processes have significant economic advantages over the conventional thermal-driven ones. Also, the complicated electrified processes can be well controlled when facing large throughput or composition disturbance.