E nergy costs are the largest percentage of a hydrocarbon plant’s operating expenditures. This is especially true of the distillation process, which requires substantial energy consumption. Concerns over recent high costs and economic pressures continually emphasise the need for efficient distillation design and operation without a loss of performance. This article illustrates how energy-effici...

Distillation separates compounds by the variation in how effortlessly they vaporize. The two main types of standard distillation comprise unremitting distillation and batch distillation. Unremitting distillation, as the name says, unremittingly takes a feed and separates it into two or more products. Batch distillation takes on lot (or batch) at a time of feed and splits it into products by sel...

Distillation towers are essential to the chemical process industries (CPI), so it is imperative that they are properly designed and operated. Tower internals are arguably the most important piece of process equipment, since they cannot easily be accessed after startup. If the tower internals malfunction, the distillation tower will follow suit and the entire chemical process will suffer. This a...

Batch distillation is one of the most important unit operations for the small-scale production of specialty and fine chemicals. The so called Middle Vessel Batch Distillation (MVBD) with total reflux offers many advantages compared to conventional batch distillation. It is favourable due to the simultaneous production of three products of high purity. In this work, we present a thorough analysi...

In this paper, novel equipment for laboratory studies of heterogeneously catalyzed reactive distillation is described. The so called D+R tray equipment consists of a combination of conventional bubble cap trays with sections that are filled with catalyst and through which the liquid flows when it passes from one distillation tray down to the next. It is designed so that the catalyst can be easi...

Water revitalization for a space station can consist of membrane filtration processes and a distillation process. Water recycling equipment using membrane filtration processes was manufactured for ground testing. It was assembled using commercially available components. Two systems for the distillation are studied; one is an absorption type thermopervaporation cell and the other is a vapor comp...