Atmospheric-Pressurized Process for Dimethyl Carbonate/Methanol Separation with and without Heat Integration: Design and Control

Hong-Mei Wei; Fu-Jie Wang; Hong-Wei Yan; Wei-Zhou Jiao; Wei Wei

doi:10.1021/acsomega.3c00656

Atmospheric-Pressurized Process for Dimethyl Carbonate/Methanol Separation with and without Heat Integration: Design and Control

ACS Omega. 2023 Jun 2;8(23):20450-20470. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.3c00656. eCollection 2023 Jun 13.

Authors

Hong-Mei Wei¹, Fu-Jie Wang¹, Hong-Wei Yan¹, Wei-Zhou Jiao², Wei Wei³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, North University of China, No.3 Xueyuan Road, Taiyuan 030051, Shanxi, China.
² Shanxi Province Key Laboratory of Higee-Oriented Chemical Engineering, North University of China, No.3 Xueyuan Road, Taiyuan 030051, Shanxi, China.
³ Low Carbon Energy Conversion Technology Research Center, Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Science, Shanghai 201203, P. R. China.

Abstract

Process economy and dynamic controllability are critical for DMC/MeOH separation via the PSD process. In this paper, rigorous steady-state and dynamic simulations of atmospheric-pressurized process for DMC/MeOH separation with no, partial, and full heat integration have been carried out with Aspen Plus and Aspen Dynamics. Further investigations have been conducted into the economic design and dynamic controllability of the three neat systems. Simulation results indicated that: the separation process via full and partial heat integration provided TAC savings of 39.2 and 36.2%, respectively, compared to that of no heat integration; the non-heat-integrated system displays good dynamic performance, critical dynamic penalties were demonstrated for both partial and full heat integration processes, while the partial one exhibited a more robust control except for precisely maintaining X_B2(DMC); a PCTC scheme with a CC/TC cascade control was proposed to precisely maintain the product concentration for the fully heat-integrated PSD process. A comparison of the economy between atmospheric-pressurized and pressurized-atmospheric sequences indicated that the former is more energy efficient. Further, a comparison of the economy between atmospheric-pressurized and pressurized-atmospheric sequences indicated that the former is more energy efficient. This study will provide new insights into the energy efficiency and has some implications for design and control of DMC/MeOH separation in the industrialization process.