Abstract—The separation of propane and propylene mixture requires high capital cost and high energy consumption. This challenge is obvious since propane and propylene have similar molecular size and physical properties. Therefore in the last few years, many processes have been surveyed as alternatives to distillation for this separation. However, researches carried out on these techniques indicated that they have not yet shown sufficient advantage over the distillation process. Therefore the objective of this work is to explore the possibility of establishing optimum operating parameters for better operation of the distillation process for realizing higher product quality and improved energy consumption. In this paper the simulation and analysis of an existing propylene-propane distillation column with 150 trays were carried out. The result of the response optimization showed a product yield of 95% propylene in the distillate from a minimum of 94% yield, reduced reflux ratio from 10.2 to 10.02 and about 0.4 ×10
6 kcal/h of reboiler energyinput was saved. It was evident from these results that optimum parameters had been established for better control of the splitter column case study with the potential of achieving higher product quality and improved energy consumption.
Index Terms—from 10.2 to 10.02 and about 0.4 ×106 kcal/h of reboiler energy
Aniediong M. Umo was with the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, University of Uyo, Nigeria (e-mail: umoaniediong@gmail.com).
Etim N. Bassey is with the Department of Chemical/Petrochemical Engineering, Akwa Ibom State University, Ikot Akpaden, Nigeria (e-mail: enbassey@yahoo.co.uk).
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Cite: Aniediong M. Umo and Etim N. Bassey, "Simulation and Performance Analysis of Propylene-Propane Splitter in Petroleum Refinery Case Study," International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 1-4 , 2017.
