Revamp Strategies
For Fatty Acid
Distillation Sections
of Oleo-chemical Plants
Peter W. Faessler
Karl Kolmetz
Wan Seang Kek
29 September 2004
Abstract
The importance of the Oleo-chemical Industries has been increased recently as its products are widely used in several applications such as the manufacturing of cosmetic products, food, pharmaceuticals, soaps, and personal care items. It results in the requirements of the fatty acids and glycerol products becoming more stringent in terms of purity or quality.
With the increasing competitive environment for Oleo-chemicals industry, the producers are facing the challenges to improve product quality and plant capacity, while reducing operating cost to produce return on capital investments. It is the requirement for the design and plant engineers to revamp the existing plant in order to meet the increasing requirements. To secure the success of a revamp, some strategies and engineering work are advisable to be taken during the feasibility stages. One of the major limiting factors of an oleo chemical plant is the distillation or separation section.
A revamp of an existing plant should start with a reconciled mass and energy balance of the original unit design, and current unit operations. When these two points have been confirmed, then one can utilize these two data points to make assumptions about increases in capacity and product purities.
The strategies of a revamp should include the existing unit's available equipment and optimization of the revamp to maximize return on investment. The producer may consider revamping the existing plant instead of building a new fractionation series with much less capital investment. The integrated design of second generation structured packing, Mellapak Plus, with falling film reboilers is most economic and efficient solution currently for fatty acid distillation plants.