New Configurations of Atmospheric Distillation Unit by Heat Integration: Energy & Utility Water Consumption

Crude oil distillation process is a major consumer of energy and demands 35-45% of the total energy consumed in a refinery unit. The main target of this research is to maximize the heat recovery in this unit and minimize the required superheat flows. To this end, different raw crude oils have been studied to warm up in two different configurations to evaluate the performance of atmospheric distillation unit. The simulation results showed that the plant energy consumption in two proposed configurations of cold-to-warm and warm-to-cold is significantly reduced to 20.52% and 18.97%, respectively.

Keywords:

Atmospheric Distillation Column , Heat Integration , Heat Recovery , Energy Efficiency , Utility Water Consumption.