The Malaysian Journal of Analytical Sciences Vol 17 No 2 (2013): 291 – 299

 

 

 

OPTIMIZATION of A distillation unit in terms of POTENTIAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT AND ECONOMICS

 

(Pengoptimuman Unit Penyulingan dari Segi Potensi Impak Ekonomi dan Alam Sekitar)

 

Alhassan Salami Tijani^1*, Naveed Ramzan²

 

¹Faculty of Mechanical Engineering

Universiti Teknologi MARA, 40450 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia.

²Department of Chemical Engineering,

University of Engineering and Technology, G.T Road Lahore (54890) Lahore-Pakistan

 

*Corresponding author: alhassan@salam.uitm.edu.my

 

 

Abstract

Process energy integration and continuous improvement of process technology are increasing issues to ensure profitability of chemical productions. These objectives are increasingly important due to long-term environmental impact of energy degradation, such as resource depletion, emissions and the release of “waste” heat. The earlier energy conservation, process economics and environmental aspects are integrated into the process development, the easier and less expensive it is to improve the process design. In this work different distillation process design alternatives have been considered with respect to evaluations of process economics and potential environmental impacts. “Optimum design alternatives” are analyzed related to these objectives. A multi-criteria decision making technique such as (Analytic Hierarchy Process) AHP is applied for ranking the alternatives. This method reveals that the heat pump distillation unit which has the highest score of 52 % is the best alternative when compare with base case. In terms of the effluent streams the base case has a less potential environmental impact (PEI) compared with heat pump. The lower total PEI/kg (7.45E-01) of the base case illustrates that the material utilization efficiency of the base case is better than the heat pump whose PEI/kg is 8.14E-01.

 

Keywords: economic, thermodynamic efficiency, distillation unit, waste reduction (WAR) algorithm

 

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