Heterogeneous Azeotropic Extractive Coupled Heat Pump Distillation for Triethylamine‐Dichloromethane‐Acetone‐Water

Abstract There are three kinds of binary azeotropes and one kind of a near‐boiling compound with clamping zone characteristics in the triethylamine‐dichloromethane‐acetone‐water system, which belongs to complex quaternary systems. A four‐column distillation process of heterogeneous azeotropic extraction for the separation of the system was designed, simulated, and optimized to obtain more suitable process parameters and energy consumption distribution of each column. On this basis, taking the total annual cost (TAC) as the comprehensive economic evaluation index and CO 2 emission as the environmental evaluation index, the thermal integration technology and mechanical vapor recompression (MVR) heat pump technology were applied to the energy‐saving research of the distillation process for the system. The results indicate that compared with the conventional four‐column heterogeneous azeotropic extractive distillation process, the thermal integration distillation process and single‐column MVR heat pump coupled thermal integration distillation process can save energy consumption and TAC, and it can reduce CO 2 emission.