ADVANCED FRACTIONATION TECHNOLOGY FOR THE OLEO CHEMICAL INDUSTRY
Peter Faessler
Karl Kolmetz
Kek Wan Seang
Siang Hua Lee
Prepared for
Oil and Fats International Congress 2004
World Congress on OleoChemicals 2004
Malaysian Palm Oil Board
Putra World Trade Center
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
2nd October 2004
Abstract
Steadily increasing requirements on fractionation demands in the oleo chemical industry, require advances in separation technology. Today, often a distillation column has to process several different feeds, but also has to be able to produce two different products simultaneously. Divided wall columns have been proposed and used in the chemical industry, but there are presently few applications of divided wall columns in the oleo chemical sector. The main reason prohibiting their use might be in the limited familiarity, higher requirements on operation, potential corrosion problems and last but not least, limited flexibility.
Fractionation columns with added side stripper are a well-proven way to satisfy increased demand of separation duties. The availability of second-generation structured packing increases the efficiency and reduces pressure drops while, making it possible to increase capacity and /or product purities. Lower pressure drop has a positive impact on the separation itself. Combining these effects with an increase in capacity will result in a synergy effect on the separation performance.
The newly developed BXPlus structured packing is a powerful tool for advanced Glycerin separation, combining good wet-ability resulting in high efficiency with low-pressure drop. New columns can be designed much more compactly. Revamps will improve both capacity and/or purity.