Improvement of the Deethanizing and Depropanizing Fractionation Steps in NGL Recovery Process Using Dividing Wall Column

概要

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In this work, our aim is to utilize the dividing wall column to improve the performance of the deethanizing and depropanizing fractionation steps in natural gas liquid processing. Starting from an initial conventional column sequence, the initial designs of the conventional dividing wall column and the top dividing wall column were obtained by maintaining the number of trays. In succession, they were optimized to reduce the energy consumption using the factorial design. The results show that the conventional dividing wall column and the top dividing wall column can offer many benefits to the system, e.g. decreasing the operating cost including refrigeration cost, and minimizing the reboiler and condenser duty. Furthermore, by using dividing wall column, both the purity of ethane and its recovery rate are increased. The influence of utility prices on the operating cost saving of the conventional and the top dividing wall columns was also studied. In addition, to further enhance the dividing wall column performance, heating was integrated on the top and an interreboiling system was installed at the bottom section of the dividing wall column.