Energy use in the chemical industries is dominated by the cost of separation, particularly distillation. There are an estimated 40,000 distillation columns in the U.S. that consume approximately 18% of all of the energy in the manufacturing sector and recent estimates put this use at 2.4 quadrillion Btu/yr. This is a staggering amount. However, distillation remains the most versatile means of separation and thus will continue to be used in some capacity to address a wide variety of separation needs. Other current separation techniques simply are not competitive in terms of both volume produced and purity of product.
New synthesis and design methodologies for overall energy efficiency must not, in our opinion, dismiss energy needs associated with distillation but rather extend the current knowledge base for finding minimum energy requirements in separations to processes involving multiple units.
This is the approach adopted in Professor Lucia’s research group in their efforts on energy efficient chemical process design, which is currently supported by the National Science Foundation. |