Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.53, No.44, 16937-16947, 2014
New Technologies To Enhance the Distillation Yield of Petroleum Fractionation
We review the performance of different technologies published in a recent patent by Ji and Bagajewicz (2007) aimed at increasing distillates yield. We also present different implementation schemes composed of various combinations of the two technologies and compare both distillate yield and energy expenditure to the current conventional distillation process for light, intermediate, and heavy crudes. We demonstrate sizable increases of yield as well as significant profit. The criteria for analysis were yield, energy savings, gross margin, and potential extra revenue for each scheme. While the comparisons are made on the basis of grassroots design, we took one technology and assumed a retrofit of an existing column via simple change in the heat recovery, to assess the extra investment needed.