comparision of vapor recompression with vapor recompression with an intermediate reboiler methods for separation propane- propylene mixture

Separation processes play a very important role in the chemical process industries. distillation is the most widely used separation technique in industry. however, separation of mixtures with components having close boiling points by using simple distillation is difficult and impossible in some cases. propane- propylene separation is a very difficult and costly process because the boiling points of these two substances are very close and the process is very energy-intensive consequently, energy optimization is considered essential. in the present research, the vapor recompression (vrc) and vapor recompression with an intermediate reboiler (vrc with and intermediate reboiler) methods were employed for optimizing energy in the propane- propylene separation process. a comparison between the various processes was also made with respect to energy consumption. the results indicated that the vrc with an intermediate boiler and the vrc techniques decreased energy consumption by 1.42% and 76.4%, respectively. the vrc method was selected as the best method because the most important reason for the reduction in energy consumption in this method was that it did not require any hot utility.