A Novel Design Methodology for Separation Processes to Minimize the Energy Consumption

In the last decade we have been developing the self-heat recuperation technology which can reduce the energy consumption of various chemical processes such as distillation, desalination, PSA, air separation, desulfurization, methanol synthesis, etc. by adding work to circulate whole process heat without heat addition. Furthermore, the thermodynamic mechanism of heat circulation system including the distillation system has been elucidated in terms of exergy analysis with a modularization method using the module expression flow, temperature-entropy, and energy conversion diagrams based on the concept of exergy and anergy. It was found that exergy destruction takes place only in the energy conversion module and the distillation module due to the heat transfer but not in the preheating modules. Therefore, we concluded that the minimum work required for the processing is converted to the waste heat of which the anergy is total exergy destructions. In this paper we summarize the process design methodology based on the exergy analysis for general separation processes to minimize the energy consumption.