Performance investigation of vapour recompressed batch distillation for separating ternary wide boiling constituents

Abstract

The vapour recompression scheme (VRC) has been very effective in continuous distillation for energy intensification. The applicability of this scheme for the separation of multicomponent wide boiling constituents in batch distillation is a major challenge, because of the unsteady nature of the batch. In this study, the vapour recompression scheme has been implemented for the separation of multicomponent wide boiling constituents in the batch distillation. For the optimal usage of energy from compressed vapours manipulation of top tray vapour or external energy is done. A comparative study of the vapour recompressed batch distillation having a variable speed single compressor (SVRBD) and double stage compressor (DVRBD) with conventional batch distillation in terms of energy savings and total annualized cost is done. The VRC schemes achieve an energy savings of 50% and 10.03% total annualized cost (TAC) for SVRBD and DVRBD achieve 52% energy savings and 12.21% TAC with a payback period of 10 years.