Divided Wall Column
The realization of such an intensified system for the separation of a multicomponent feed into three fractions in one column shell with one or more dividing walls and in general with one reboiler.
Divided wall column. The exxonmobil application previously cited is a tray tower. Another of the company s fractionation activities is the divided wall column technology used to separate a hydrocarbon mixture into three high purity fractions by one distillation tower only. While it may be easier to visualize a dwc with packing there re examples of successful installations of both types. With one feed point the dividing wall column system can be designed to minimize the mixing entropy loss compared to the two column system.
The feed to the column has been generalized as a mixture of saturated liquid and vapor 0. It therefore offers cost effective solutions for a wide range of fractionation tasks especially in the refining and petrochemical industry. The initial vapor and liquid spilt for the internal wall regions should be set to 50. The column may contain either trays or packing.
For placing the dividing wall in the middle of the column 33 to 66 of the overall height is a good initial guess. Lower energy consumption can be achieved in a dividing wall column system mostly due to a reduction in energy loss associated with entropy of mixing. A divided wall column has been modeled as a petlyuk column with no heat transfer across the column wall.