Further optimization of a parallel double-effect organosilicon distillation scheme through exergy analysis

In our previous work, a significant improvement in organosilicon monomer distillation using parallel double-effect heat integration between a heavies removal column and six other columns, as well as heat integration between methyltrichlorosilane and dimethylchlorosilane columns, reduced the total exergy loss of the currently running counterpart by 40.41%. Further research regarding this optimized scheme demonstrated that it was necessary to reduce the higher operating pressure of the methyltrichlorosilane column, which is required for heat integration between the methyltrichlorosilane and dimethylchlorosilane columns. Therefore, in this contribution, a challenger scheme is presented with heat pumps introduced separately from the originally heat-coupled methyltrichlorosilane and dimethylchlorosilane columns in the above-mentioned optimized scheme, which is the prototype for this work. Both schemes are simulated using the same purity requirements used in running industrial units. The thermodynamic properties from the simulation are used to calculate the energy consumption and exergy loss of the two schemes. The results show that the heat pump option further reduces the flowsheet energy consumption and exergy loss by 27.35% and 10.98% relative to the prototype scheme. These results indicate that the heat pumps are superior to heat integration in the context of energy-savings during organosilicon monomer distillation.