Sharif Digital Repository

Distillation is the most widely-used but the most energy-consuming separation process in the chemical industry. The thermal energy added at the reboiler is used to evaporate a liquid mixture and is wasted when liquefying the vapor flow at the condenser to obtain a reflux liquid flow. However, the thermal energy recovered at the condenser cannot be used to heat other flows in the same distillation column since its temperature is lower than the other stages. To improve the low energy efficiency of distillation, various new ideas have been proposed in the literature. One of them is the internally heat-integrated distillation column (HIDiC). In a conventional distillation column, the temperature...