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Research Paper

Dynamics performance of pressure swing distillation for acetone and cyclohexane separation

  • ZHANG Chun-Hua ,
  • ZHU Lin ,
  • ZHU Lin Li-Ping ,
  • ZHOU Qian ,
  • JIN Shi-Sheng
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  • 1. College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, Sichuan 610500, China 2. College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Yangtze Normal University, Fuling, Chongqing 408000, China

Received date: 2021-01-22

  Revised date: 2021-05-07

  Online published: 2022-02-28

Abstract

As significant chemical raw material and solvent, acetone and cyclohexane are widely applied in chemical industry. However, the mixture of them will form a minimum boiling homogeneous azeotrope at atmospheric pressure, which severely hinders the separation of them. Based on the advantages of pressure swing distillation (PSD) and the pressure sensitivity of the azeotropic mixture of acetone and cyclohexane, the investigation of the design and the simulation of PSD are implemented by Aspen Plus software. The results show that the purity of products achieve 99.9wt%. In order to save the total annual cost (TAC) and energy, based on the heat integration technology and economic optimization, it is implemented that the process enhancement with the minimum TAC as objective function. Furthermore, the TAC of the steady-state process of conventional, partial and full heat integration PSD are 3.64×105, 2.83×105, 2.76×105 $/y, respectively. Compared with the conventional PSD, the economic reduction rate of partial and full heat integration are 22.36% and 24.18%, respectively, and the full heat integration is most economical. In view of these, the different control structures are established by Aspen Plus Dynamics, and the anti-disturbance performance is investigated by changing the feed flow rate and composition, the dynamic performance of the full heat integration PSD process is assessed. The dynamic response results indicate that the control structure with a fixed reflux-to-feed flow rate ratio is better than the control structure with a fixed reflux ratio in terms of settlement time. However, the control structure with a fixed reflux-to-feed flow rate ratio cannot maintain product purity, up to the design value of 99.9wt%. For meet the goal of the requirements of products purities, an improved control structure with feed forward proportional (reboiler heat duty to feed flow rate ratio) control and composition-temperature cascade control are proposed, which can effectively ensure that the product purity reaches more than 99.9wt%.

Cite this article

ZHANG Chun-Hua , ZHU Lin , ZHU Lin Li-Ping , ZHOU Qian , JIN Shi-Sheng . Dynamics performance of pressure swing distillation for acetone and cyclohexane separation[J]. The Chinese Journal of Process Engineering, 2022 , 22(2) : 249 -257 . DOI: 10.12034/j.issn.1009-606X.221022

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