In this work, applications of exergy and economic concepts to compression, heat exchange, and separation processes were used for calculation of the irreversibility rate, thermodynamic efficiency, and internal rate of return (IRR) of the profitability. A case study based on a real process, the purification of 1,2-dichloroethane (DCE) in a high-purity distillation column, is presented. This column has the highest steam flow rate in any vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) plant. A configuration using a vapor compression heat pump is proposed for improvement of the energy efficiency without having to make important process modifications. Existing and proposed configurations were implemented using the Aspen Plus™ commercial simulator; the results of the existing configuration were validated with data extracted from the plant. The objective of this work was to compare the existing configuration with the proposed one, using a thermodynamic and an economic approach.
Exergy; Economic; Cost; Thermodynamic; Efficiency; Distillation
