Improvement of the butyl acetate process through heat integration: A sustainability-based assessment

• Published in: Chemical engineering and processing 2019-01, Vol.135, p.93-107
• Main Authors: Mangili, Patrick V., Prata, Diego M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Butyl acetate; Eco-efficiency; Heat integration; Process simulation; Sustainability indicators
• ISSN: 0255-2701; 1873-3204
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cep.2018.11.020

[Display omitted] •Simulation of a conventional and a reactive distillation butyl acetate processes.•Analysis and simulation of different heat-integrated designs for both technologies.•Design and simulation of utility plants through heuristic approaches.•Calculation environmental, economic and safety indicators.•Joint evaluation of the processes’ sustainability through the calculated indicators. The heat integration of a conventional and a reactive distillation technologies for butyl acetate production is studied in this work. Different configurations were evaluated and compared to the original designs in terms of their sustainable performances. The comparison was carried out through the Eco-efficiency Comparison Index method by determining six ecological indicators (raw materials consumption, fuel consumption, energy consumption, CO2 emissions, water consumption and wastewater generation), five economic indicators (specific raw materials cost, specific energy cost, specific water cost, liquid waste cost fraction and yield factor) and three safety indicators (safety hazard fire/explosion, chemical exposure index and chronic toxicity factor). The heat integration proved to be a convenient strategy since it significantly improved the conventional and reactive distillation processes’ eco-efficiencies. While the reactive distillation technology has a 53% higher environmental performance than the conventional route, the former’s integrated arrangement increases its eco-efficiency up to 62% when compared to the latter. Finally, we propose new intensified flowsheets for both the conventional and reactive distillation schemes, being the latter approximately 49% more sustainable than the former.