Heat-Integrated Pressure-Swing-Distillation Process for Separation of Tetrahydrofuran/Methanol with Different Feed Compositions

A process optimization is carried out to separate binary azeotropic mixtures of tetrahydrofuran and methanol by pressure-swing distillation according to the pressure-sensitive property of the binary system. Rigorous steady-state simulation that is based on the minimization of the total annual cost for partially and fully heat-integrated pressure-swing-distillation processes is implemented on Aspen Plus following the sequential iterative optimization procedure. The feasible sequence of high pressure and low pressure of two columns in the pressure-swing-distillation process and the suitable heat integration scheme are both determined by the feed composition.