Does the feed to the distillation tower need to be preheated before entering it?
Thread Content
We know that preheating the feed to the distillation column before feeding it into the column can achieve certain energy-saving effects. Save steam consumption in the first tower. However, if steam savings are not taken into account, or if the amount of feed is very small and thus the steam saved through preheating is minimal, should we then omit the use of a preheater and just feed the material directly? I’d like to discuss with everyone under what circumstances it would be necessary to preheat the feed to a distillation tower before feeding it into the tower ? Furthermore, in the two cases of ① the feed not being preheated (for example, entering the tower at 0°C) and ② the feed being preheated to its bubble point temperature, will the temperature at the feed plate location inside the tower be the same? ?
Feed preheating: 1. It is indeed possible to reduce the amount of steam at the bottom of the tower, but such preheating should be carried out using a heat integration approach; otherwise, the combined load on the preheater and the reboiler remains largely unchanged. 2. The separation efficiency can be appropriately improved or degraded. 3. The impact of feed temperature on the feed plate temperature requires analysis on a case-by-case basis. (A small feed rate results in a high vapor-liquid load inside the tower, so the impact is minimal.) ； On the contrary, the opposite)
①The feed is not preheated (for example, it enters the tower at 0°C). ② The feed is preheated to its bubble point temperature. In these two cases, will the temperature at the feed plate inside the tower be the same?
If the boiling point is relatively low and the operation is not a continuous feeding process, there is no need to preheat the feed!
Based on the specific material components and temperature, PROII is used to simulate the two scenarios separately; by comparing the results obtained from these simulations, it is possible to see the parameters of each tray layer； tools-spreadsheet-distillation