Efficiency Improvement of Distillation Column Pratibha Singh 1 1 Chemical Engineering Department, Mahatma Gandhi Mission’s College of Engineering and Technology Kamothe,Navi Mumbai,MH-410209,India. Prajakta Angre 1 , 1 Chemical Engineering Department, Mahatma Gandhi Mission’s College of Engineering and Technology Kamothe,Navi Mumbai,MH-410209,India. Alok Pandit 2 2 Director, Equinox Software and Services Private Limited, Unit No. 29, Electronic Estate Pune-Satara Road, Pune, 411009 Abstract- Methanol-water system was chosen to study heat pump assisted distillation system along with conventional distillation. Conventional process along with mechanical vapour recompression and vapour compression was simulated using UniSim software platform in order to find energy savings as well as economically best alternative. Mechanical vapour recompression and vapour compression for this system shows energy savings of 82% and 78% respectively with payback period of less than year. Keywords: Distillation, Energy savings, Heat pump, Process Simulation 1. INTRODUCTION Distillation being a war-horse of separation in wide range of process industries, it has continuously elicited interest from researchers in finding ways to optimize its energy requirements. Mix et al. [12] found that 60% of energy used by chemical industry was for distillation. Heat pump utilizes the energy of the cold stream to heat the bottom hot mixture thus saving large utility consumption. Anton et al [6] proposes a novel selection scheme of energy efficient distillation technologies, with a special focus on heat pumps. Methanol-water separation by distillation is widely reported for methanol production in literature [3,4]. Juntao Zhang [8] mainly focuses on heat integration used for methanol production.. Feng and Berntsson [9] has derived expression for critical COP which is a function of price ratio between input energy and heating, the price ratio between equipment, energy and the payback period. Quadri [13] used heat pumps for propane-propene separation and suggested single compressor scheme and double compressor schemes. Later Annakou and Mizsey [14] found that vapour recompression gives 37% savings on total annual cost when compared to conventional column for C3 separation. Fonyo et al. [15] has shown 29% saving on utilities for butane-isobutane separation and Eduardo [8] has reported energy saving of 33% by vapour recompression. The objective of this work is to simulate methanol-water distillation process and to compare the energy and cost of the conventional distillation with heat pump assisted distillation system. Two different configurations are considered (MVR, VC) to determine best alternative to the conventional distillation. All the simulations were undertaken with UniSim Design R430 build 18522 under license from Honeywell Process Solutions [11]. 2. UniSim SIMULATION OF THE DISTILLATION COLUMN SYSTEMS 2.1 Conventional Column Figure 1: UniSim process flow diagram for the conventional column To compare conventional column (CC) with heat pump assisted distillation systems, NRTL-ideal property package International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT) ISSN: 2278-0181 http://www.ijert.org IJERTV6IS010251 Vol. 6 Issue 01, January-2017 (This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.) Published by : www.ijert.org 505