Thermodynamic efficiency of membrane-assisted distillation processes

Membrane processes are considered as comparably mild separation processes offering the potential for significant energy savings compared with azeotropic distillation processes. Despite higher investment and material costs, they are of particular interest for improving the energy efficiency in the chemical industry. However, energy savings of more than 20%–30% are rarely reported and even a general superiority can be disputed. To further elucidate this controversial, the current study pursues a quantitative assessment of the thermodynamic efficiency of pervaporation and vapor permeation processes with stand-alone distillation and hybrid membrane-assisted distillation processes for the separation of azeotropic mixtures. The results confirm the case-dependent potential of distillation processes to outperform membrane-assisted separations in terms of energy efficiency, considering proper heat integration. Although energy efficiency is becoming significantly important, it should be considered in the context of economic performance to determine an optimal trade-off and to select the best process alternative during conceptual process design.

Subjects

exergy analysis

optimization

pervaporation

thermodynamic efficiency

vapor permeation

DDC Class

600: Technik

620: Ingenieurwissenschaften

Funding(s)

Projekt DEAL

Lizenz

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Publication version

publishedVersion

Name

AIChE Journal - 2023 - Kruber - Thermodynamic efficiency of membrane%E2%80%90assisted distillation processes.pdf

Size

2.41 MB

Format

Adobe PDF

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Thermodynamic efficiency of membrane-assisted distillation processes