INTENSIFICATION OF RECOVERY HEAT EXCHANGE IN RECTIFIED ETHYL ALCOHOL PRODUCTION PROCESSES

Abstract

Traditionally, a lot of ethyl alcohol is produced in Ukraine for the needs of the food, pharmaceutical, and fuel industries. Ukraine has a significant raw material base for the production of ethyl alcohol, which makes this industry one of the most promising for the country's economy. A reduction in the cost of production is a necessary condition for healthy competition of ethanol producers on the domestic and foreign markets. Providing an impetus for the development of the specified industry is the reduction of specific energy costs for production through energy-efficient modernization of existing enterprises. Today, one of the methods of reducing the specific energy consumption for the production of ethyl alcohol is the method of integration of heat flows, which is based on pinch analysis and does not require a total reconstruction of the production. Obtaining data on technological flows was carried out on the basis of the regulatory documentation of the equipment and technological scheme of the installation of the centralized distillation of the main fraction of ethyl alcohol and the report on the energy audit of this installation, which was carried out at one of the alcohol enterprises of Ukraine. For the thermal integration of the existing process, four columns of the centralized ethanol distillation unit were chosen: fermentation and purification, rectification and methanol. The thermal and material balances of these columns of the installation were calculated. To maximize the energy potential of technological flows, the principles of pinch design were used and a grid diagram was designed. To optimize heat energy recovery, ΔТmin – 10 ºС was chosen. This led to the need to use energy-efficient heat exchange equipment. A significant reduction in the use of external utilities (cold by 17.2 % and hot by 12.8 %) for the selected technological flows and the short payback period of the project (about six months) make it reasonable to use this kind of solution to the problem.