Heat pumps in distillation (original) (raw)

Vapor recompression has become the standard heat pump technology in distillation and substantial energy savings in the order of 50% have been achieved. Economic applications of VRC are limited to column temperature differences of about 30 C, which is only one fifth of the across the pinch columns in operation. 2 generation heat pump systems based on further heat integration and novel heat pump equipment do not only increase the potential energy savings but also extend the application range to columns with a larger temperature difference.