(63c) Energy Conservation In Multicomponent Non-Ideal Distillation Using Heat Pump and Split Tower Technique

       This study deals with reducing energy requirement in multicomponent distillation using  heat pump with and without split tower technique for two ternary feed systems  Methanol-Ethanol-Water (a) and Acetone-methanol-Water (b), and one quaternary feed system n-Hexane – MCP – Ethanol and Benzene (c). The separation was carried out using one configuration for each feed system according to their non-ideality. Many variables have studied such as operating pressure of each column in configuration in the range of 0.5-3.0atm, feed composition and fractional recovery of 0.9, 0.925, 0.95, and 0.99 for feed systems a and b and 0.9 for feed   system c.  Computer programmers written in FORTRAN 90 were developed for the design of multicomponent distillation with and without heat pump system with and without split tower technique.  The results show that the percentage reduction in energy requirements using heat pump was ranging from 12.14% to 76.02% when the same operating pressure was used in each column in the configuration. While with split tower technique the percent reduction ranging from 12.02 % to 78.00 %. Also this technique gives a percentage saving in total annual cost ranging from 10.00% to 77.36% for all cases studied. The present work was compared with previous work using heat integration for the same systems and the same variables. The results show that when using heat pump technique there is an average of 20% saving in total energy consumption over that with heat integration.