| Summary: | Process Intensification (PI) is an emerging concept in chemical engineering which describes the design innovations that lead to significant shrinkage in size and dramatic boost in efficiency in a process plant. Distillation, which is one of the most important separation technologies in the chemical industry, is therefore a crucial component in PI. Here, we discuss two aspects of PI in multicomponent distillation: 1) Performing simultaneous heat and mass integration among thermally coupled distillation columns to reduce the number of columns and heat duty requirement; and 2) Conducting any thermally coupled distillation in only a single column shell using a dividing wall column that is fully operable. Through examples, we show that synergistic use of both strategies leads to the design of compact, easy-to-operate, energy efficient and cost effective multicomponent distillation systems.
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