SILVA, L. M. D.; SILVA, Lily Maciene Diniz.
Abstract:
Distillation is a great user of energy and this represents a good
part of the capital and operacional costs in the chemicals and
petrochemicals industries. The use of a heat-pump in distillation process
is a way to reduce the operacional cost due to the economy of energy
from the process despite the adicional apport be greater. The objective
of is this study is to verify the economic viability of the system of
distillation with mechanic recompression of vapor for separation of the
mixture ethanol-water with tax and time of return on additional investment
as objective function. The study, divided in three parts, used for simulation
of the systems with commercial simulator (HYSIM version C2.54). In the
first stage, a conventional distillation unit is simulated and an evaluation
of the costs done, aiming at to establish excellent conditions of operation.
An adapted distillation system with a direct recompression vapor heatpump
is simulate in the second stage, with an economic evaluation,
comparing the results with those of a convencional distillation system
operating at 1,5 atm. Fially, the effect of the pressure drop through the
distillation column is investigated. In that condition, the results shows the
use of a vapor recompression scheme is not economically attractive , the
return on investment beeing 7.0% per year. Changing the pressure for 1,2
atm, the return on investment increases to 14% per year. This results
shows the sensibility of the project regarding the pressure and how much
its reduction turns available the heat-pump scheme.