Design consideration with dividing wall column for production of renewable olefins with economic, environmental, energy, and exergy (4Es) criteria

Abstract

A clean and sustainable renewable olefins production process from waste CO₂ and green H₂ was proposed in this research work. The proposed process includes CO₂ to methanol, methanol to olefins, and olefins separation steps. A heat integrated distillation column (i.e., dividing wall column (DWC)) was included in olefins separation section to replace conventional distillation columns. A rigorous process model was modeled, and detailed simulation for mass and energy balances was performed on Aspen software, which is commercial software for process simulation. Furthermore, a comprehensive analysis was conducted in terms of economic, environment, energy, and exergy to assess the feasibility of the proposed process.

In the scenario analysis for economic feasibility, the price range for the proposed process spanned from a minimum of 1.63 $ kg⁻¹ to a maximum of 7.78 $ kg⁻¹. Additionally, the CO₂ emissions range spanning from 0.462 to 17.3 kgCO₂eq kg oleinfs⁻¹ was determined in the environmental analysis. In both economic and environmental analyses, it was evident that the production of raw materials and electricity significantly influenced unit cost and CO₂ emissions. When these factors were altered in the scenario analysis, the aforementioned range could be derived. In terms of energy analysis, the technical results indicated that the energy efficiency of the proposed process was approximately 46.27 %.