What is the treatment method for cold feed in the gas phase?
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The designed feed temperature for the depropanization column is 65 degrees, but due to issues with the preheater, the actual feed temperature is 45 degrees. The temperature of the feed trays is 70 degrees, which is sufficient for achieving separation. I would like to know what effect cold feeding has on gas distillation
Using cold feed is not conducive to operation; it causes large fluctuations in the bottom temperature of the tower, reduces the concentration of heavy components at the bottom, and makes it easy for light components to be carried over to subsequent processes. Personally, I recommend not feeding cold. I’m not sure how your preheaters are designed. Is it heat exchange between the discharge from the bottom of the tower and the feed, or is waste heat used for preheating?
Maybe I expressed it incorrectly; mainly due to the high temperatures in summer, the air cooling at the top of the tower is overloaded, so we don’t dare to use the preheater. However, cooling the feed material has no impact on the quality parameters, and the product at the bottom of the tower meets the standards. I’m wondering whether, by not using the preheater, we would need to increase the heat source at the bottom of the tower to raise the temperature, which in turn would increase the load on the air cooling system