Advances in distillation: Significant reductions in energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions for crude oil separation

Crude distillation, with a long history of research and commercial improvements, is perceived to be a mature separation technology with minimal scope of improvement. By systematically searching alternative configurations, this work, through an end-to-end case study, has identified new distillation configuration options that consume 15% less energy than their conventional industrial counterparts. This accompanies a 16% reduction in carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions, which is a significant accomplishment for a mature technology whose flowsheets are among the most complicated in distillation. The algorithms used for this search are the product of a decade of research; they were developed utilizing academic separation data and adapted here to apply to commercial distillation options so that they capture the distillation process physics more accurately. These algorithms are widely applicable and can be used to synthesize and design general non-azeotropic multicomponent distillation configurations for industrial separations.