(131a) Use of Dividing Wall Technology to Increase Throughput and Improve Product Specifications in Two-Diameter Columns

Two-diameter section columns are quite common in the refining industry. Standard examples include naphtha splitter columns, stabilizer columns or depropanizer columns. These columns are encountered in applications wherein the process sees different vapor-liquid flow within the top and bottom section of the columns. In such applications, two-diameter section columns are favored by refiners over a single diameter column due to savings in fabrication of such columns. However, for any capacity increase or improving the process separation, this smaller section acts as a bottleneck due to the inability to handle increased vapor-liquid loads. Use of Dividing Wall Column (DWC) technology will allow the refiner to circumnavigate the problem. DWC allows the optimization of the lower diameter section to achieve better separation as well handle the increased capacity from the original design.. Two case studies based on actual installations will be presented:

• A conventional two-column fractionation sequence is revamped to a single two-diameter DWC column to produce the same product specifications as the original design. The second column in the sequence is idled following the revamp.
• An abandoned two diameter column is revamped for maximizing IC5 Recovery.

Authors:

• Manish Bhargava, mbhargava@gtctech.com
• Roomi Kalita, rkalita@gtctech.com

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