Conceptual Design of an Internally Heat-Integrated Reactive Distillation Column Based On Thermodynamic and Hydraulic Analysis

This work introduces an efficient approach to the conceptual design of an internally heat-integrated reactive distillation column (HIRDiC) synthesizing ethylene glycol (EG) through the hydration of ethylene oxide (EO). A systematic method is proposed to obtain a feasible physical configuration with maximum possible extent of heat integration, in which the column diameter, the number of panels and the panel size on each plate are iteratively examined and determined according to thermodynamic and hydraulic analysis. Evaluated by the total annualized capital cost (TAC), the comparison results showed that neither of the two commonly used heat distribution schemes, i.e. uniform heat transfer area and uniform heat duty distribution, was as good as the design acquired from the proposed methodology.