Conceptual design, simulation and experimental validation of divided wall column: application for non-reactive and reactive mixture

摘要

Divided wall column and reactive distillation have many advantages. If a divided wall column and a reactive distillation are integrated, they leads to a higher integrated process is a reactive divided wall column. However reactive divided wall column has still a new research area. First of all, the thesis proposed a procedure for design of divided wall column, which based on the FUGK model. Both technological and hydrodynamic aspects in the divided wall column are considered in the procedure. Design parameters are then provided to the rigorous simulation and optimization in the ProSimplus software. In order to test this procedure, both ideal and non-ideal ternary mixtures are chosen to be separated in a divided wall column. The results show that the procedure can determine parameters quickly in the case studies and can give a good initialization for rigorous simulation. Secondly, a pilot plant has been design, built and operated in our laboratory (LGC, Toulouse, France, 2013). The pilot plant will provide necessary experimental evidence to validate the previous procedure. Ternary mixture and four-component mixture of alcohols have been used in our pilot plant in steady state conditions. The results show that the composition of products, composition and temperature profile along the column are in very good agreement with simulation results. Finally, a conceptual design method for reactive divided wall column is presented. The pre-design method of R. Thery et al., (2005) and a modified shortcut method for reactive divided wall column that is based on the classical shortcut adapted to a non-reactive divided wall column by C. Triantafyllou and R. Smith (1992) are applied. To verify, simulation and experiment are considered. The methodology has been illustrated for the synthesis of Methyl Acetate from Methanol and Acetic Acid.