Heat integration of a tetrahydrofuran recovery system to save energy

Based on an existing pressure-swing distillation process for tetrahydrofuran recovery, heat integration system is investigated in which the condenser of the high-pressure column is integrated with the reboiler of the low-pressure column. Rigorous simulations for the base case and the retrofitted one are carried out with the commercial software aspen plus. Simulation results show that the integrated structure is feasible, and the energy consumption is reduced by 33.31% compared with the base case. Meanwhile, the product purity is increased in the integrated structure. © 2013 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.