Optimization of Pressure-Swing Distillation for iC5-Methanol Azeotropic Mixture Purification

Typical industrial technologies to produce tert-amyl methyl ether (TAME), a gasoline oxygenated additive, require some advanced purification process for methanol recovery from the reactor effluent, due to the presence of the iC5-methanol minimum boiling point azeotrope. Pressure-swing distillation (PSD) is widely used as an efficient method for separating pressure-sensitive azeotropic mixtures in industrial processes. However, it is well known that distillation units are responsible for the highest energy consumption in chemical separation facilities, reaching in some cases to 95% of the total energy cost. Thus, the objective of this work was to perform an optimization methodology of the main design and operational variables of the PSD process applied to the separation of the azeotropic iC5-methanol mixture, considering minimizing the objective function of total annual cost (TAC). For this purpose, Honeywell’s UniSim Design® Suite software was used to simulate the process flowchart and Matlab® was used to perform TAC optimization. The optimized PSD design revealed potential for saving of up to 12% per year in terms of TAC when compared to the non-optimized process, thus proving the feasibility of the optimization methodology for this specific process. Furthermore, it reinforces the main objective of the optimization technique that is to make chemical processes more economically competitive in the industrial sector.