Issues regarding the operation of vacuum reboilers
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Our unit is equipped with a vacuum distillation system at a pressure of 17.5 KPa.a. The steam supply to the reboiler fluctuates greatly; initially, we thought there was an excess of heavy components, so we increased the amount of product taken out, but that didn’t work (the heavy components were removed from the system after being stripped off, while the light components returned to the system). Later, the recombined fraction was simply poured directly into the storage tank, and the steam level increased immediately. Later on, the heavy components were also gone; steam still could not be introduced. Then, when material from the bottom of the tower was extracted in large quantities, steam could be supplied steadily again. I’m so worried. Hey, can you help and analyze it?
It seems like we need an expert to provide technical guidance for this
From a phenological perspective, there are still more heavy components; these can be continuously removed, and the liquid level can be increased as methods to maintain stability of the components at the bottom of the tower.
The components are too light, the temperature at the bottom of the tower is too low, the amount of steam supplied is too large; whether the steam in the shell layer condenses or not creates backpressure, which causes the steam valves to need to be opened further yet still prevents an increase in the amount of steam