The combustion properties of dimethyl ether (DME) are similar to the conventional fuels; hence it is being used as a promising green energy source. The conventional method of DME production by methanol dehydration is highly energy consuming due to the use of a series of distillation columns. In the present study, an energy efficient reactive distillation configuration is proposed for DME production which leads to higher methanol conversion with less energy requirement as compared to reported configurations. The reactive distillation (RD) and dual reaction zone reactive divided wall column (RDWC) were analyzed using steady state ASPEN simulations. Subsequently, all the design parameters were optimized by sensitivity analysis to minimize the Total Annual Cost (TAC) of the configuration. The results showed that the RD column is more energy efficient than RDWC as it requires 10.68 % less TAC. The proposed RD and dual reaction zone RDWC configurations were found to have less specific energy requirements and less cost per kg of DME than any other configuration reported earlier.

二甲醚（DME）的燃烧特性与常规燃料相似。因此，它被用作有前途的绿色能源。由于使用一系列蒸馏塔，通过甲醇脱水生产DME的常规方法非常耗能。在本研究中，提出了一种用于DME生产的高能效反应蒸馏装置，与报道的装置相比，该装置可实现更高的甲醇转化率和更少的能源需求。使用稳态ASPEN模拟分析了反应蒸馏（RD）和双反应区反应性分隔壁塔（RDWC）。随后，通过敏感性分析对所有设计参数进行了优化，以使配置的年度总成本（TAC）降至最低。结果表明，RD塔比RDWC更具能源效率，因为它需要的TAC少10.68％。与早期报道的任何其他配置相比，发现拟议的RD和双反应区RDWC配置具有更低的比能需求和每千克DME更低的成本。