(462b) The Influence Of The HEAT Transfer Between The Wall On The Separating Effect and Energy Consumption In The DWC

For the past few years, the dividing wall column(DWC) showed huge potential application and broad prospects in the conventional separation technology.

Dividing wall column is a special structure of fully thermally coupling distillation. There is a dividing wall separating the prefractionation from the main column section. At present, most of the research on the dividing wall column were based on the assumption that the dividing wall is adiabatic. But in fact, there is a obvious temperature difference between the two side of the dividing wall. This temperature difference will cause horizontal heat transfer. The influence of the heat transfer to the separating effect and energy consumption was studied.

Two kinds of different structure dividing wall columns were designed. A lab-scale experiment was conducted on the two columns. The influences of reflux ratio and distribution ratio on the concentration of the overhead n-Pentane and side withdrawing n-Hexane were also obtained.

After builded mathematical models, the rectification processes was simulated by the chemical process simulation software. A comparison between the simulative results and the experimental results was carried out and it is found that they are in agreement well. That is to say, the mathematical models were suitable.

The rectification processes of the two kinds of dividing wall columns were simulated with the specified reboiler duty. The results showed that the heat transfer can the separation efficiency. With the same reflux ratio，distribution ratio and reboiler duty, the concentration of the overhead n-Pentane and side withdrawing n-Hexane were improved because of the heat transfer. The Increase amplitude could be amounted to 30%.