An energy-efficient triple-column extractive distillation process is developed for recovering tetrahydrofuran and ethyl acetate from industrial effluent. The process development follows a rigorous hierarchical design procedure that involves entrainer design, thermodynamic analysis, process design and optimization, and heat integration. The computer-aided molecular design method is firstly used to find promising entrainer candidates and the best one is determined via rigorous thermodynamic analysis. Subsequently, the direct and indirect triple-column extractive distillation processes are proposed in the conceptual design step. These two extractive distillation processes are then optimized by employing an improved genetic algorithm. Finally, heat integration is performed to further reduce the process energy consumption. The results indicate that the indirect extractive distillation process with heat integration shows the highest performance in terms of the process economics.

为了从工业废水中回收四氢呋喃和乙酸乙酯，开发了一种高能效的三塔萃取蒸馏方法。工艺开发遵循严格的分层设计程序，其中涉及夹带器设计，热力学分析，工艺设计和优化以及热集成。首先使用计算机辅助的分子设计方法来寻找有前途的夹带剂候选物，并通过严格的热力学分析确定最佳的夹带剂。随后，在概念设计步骤中提出了直接和间接三塔萃取精馏方法。然后，通过采用改进的遗传算法来优化这两个萃取蒸馏过程。最后，进行热集成以进一步减少工艺能耗。