• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.1473-1478
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• 2011

In this study, simulation and optimization works for a demethanizer column have been performed to obtain ethane and heavier products from a pretreated natural gas stream. Pretreated natural gas feed stream is partially condensed after being precooled by exchanging heat with demethanizer top vapor stream and by using an external refrigeration cycle with a propane refrigerant. Vapor stream is furtherly cooled and partially condensed through a turbo-expander and the power generated from the expansion of turbo-expander was delivered to the compressor for the residue gas compression. Liquid stream is being cooled by Joule-Thomson expansion valve and is fed to the middle section of the demethanizer. Ethane recovery percent for feed natural gas was set to 75% and methane to ethane molar ratio was fixed as 0.015. Propane refrigeration heat duty was reduced by splitting the feed stream and to exchange heat with side reboiler.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.708-715
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• 2016

The modelling and optimization of Methyl Ethyl Ketone (MEK)-Cyclohexane (CH) separation process were performed using pressure-swing distillation with a low-high pressure column and a high-low pressure column configuration. The optimization was performed for the number of theoretical stages, and the location of the feed tray of low column and high column to obtain high-purity MEK at the top. The total reboiler heat duty at the low-high pressure column configuration and high-low pressure column configuration were at 11.7667 Mkcal/h and at 10.3484 Mkcal/h, respectively. The results showed that total reboiler heat duty could be reduced to 12.05% using a high-low pressure column configuration.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.1032-1037
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• 2011

In this study, simulation and optimization works for a demethanizer column have been performed to obtain ethane and heavier products from a pretreated natural gas stream. Pretreated natural gas feed stream was partially condensed after being precooled by exchanging heat with demethanizer top vapor stream and by using an external refrigeration cycle with a propane refrigerant. Vapor stream was cooled further and partially condensed through a turbo-expander. The power generated from the expansion of turbo-expander was delivered to the compressor for the residue gas compression. Liquid stream was cooled by Joule-Thomson expansion valve and was fed to the middle section of the demethanizer. Recovery percent of ethane for feed natural was set to 80% and methane to ethane molar ratio was fixed as 0.0119. On the other hand, some of the cold heat could be recovered by splitting the feed stream and by exchanging heat with side reboiler in order to reduce the heat duty in the propane refrigeration cycle.

• 한국연소학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1999.10a
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• pp.63-69
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• 1999

The heat exchanger using the catalytic combustion can be applied to petrochemical processes and to VOC incineration facilities. In this work, the experiment for a new fin typed catalytic heat exchanger was conducted. Catalysts for the heat exchanger were determined by testing their catalytic activities over LPG in a micro-reactor. Based on experimental results of the fin typed catalytic heat exchanger, a small scaled heat exchange system was made to test its feasibility as a reboiler used in petrochemical processes. The results showed that the catalytic heat exchanger could combust off-gases effectively and at the same time could recover completely heat produced by catalytic combustion.

• Clean Technology
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.217-223
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• 2015

In the present study, modelling and optimization of ethanol-n-heptane separation process were performed using pressure-swing distillation. The pressure-swing distillation process optimization was performed to obtain high purity ethanol and high purity n-heptane into a low-high pressure columns configuration and a high-low pressure columns configuration. The results of pressure-swing distillation process simulation and optimization using high-low pressure column configuration showed a reduced total reboiler heat duty at 5.8% which confirmed a more economical energy consumption.

• KSBB Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.230-234
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• 1999

To improve the crossflow untrafiltration flux, we applied periodic oscillations in transmembrane pressure gradient in order to promote fluid turbulence by inducing repeated compression and relaxation of the cake/gel layer. The oscillatory forms used were square-, sine-, triangle-wave, and pumping interruption. The permeate flux profiles were mathematically simulated and compared with the experimental data. The result showed the periodic pumping interruption most effectively improved the overall flux by up to about 32%. Enough pumping off-time, at least on the order of tens of seconds, was needed to allow the solutes in the layer to diffuse back to the bulk phase. It was better to start the oscillations earlier before the layer was fully established. The square-wave oscillation yielded about 11% increase, which was particularly pronounced in the later part of the filtration. Either the amplitude or the period of the oscillations resulted little influence on flux.actate ester, and lactate ester produced in esterification reaction was distilled simultaneously with hydrolysis reaction into lactic acid. When the yields of lactic acid recovered by batch reactive distillations with various alcohols were compared, the yield of lactic acid was increased as the volatility of lactate ester was increased. In this batch reactive distillation, because the mixtures condensed in partial condensor were flown to reboiler through distillation column, the recovery yield of lactic acid was affected by operation temperature of partial condensor. Hydrolysis reaction into lactic acid in distillation column rarelyoccurred because of short retention time of lactate ester and water. Lactate ester was reacted into lactic acid in reboiler.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.450-456
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• 2015

In the present study, modelling and optimization of ethanol-benzene separation process were performed using pressure-swing distillation. Order to obtain a reliable results, vapour-liquid equilibrium (VLE) experiments of ethanol-benzene binary system were performed. The parameters of thermodynamic equation were determined using experimental data and the regression. The pressure-swing distillation process optimization was performed to obtain high purity ethanol and high purity benzene into a low-high pressure columns configuration and a high-low pressure columns configuration. The heat duty values of the reboiler from simulation were compared, and the process was optimized to minimize the heat duty.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.245-249
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• 2013

The depropanizing, debutanizing and deisobutanizing fractionation steps of processing natural gas liquids were improved through studying complex distillation arrangements, including the double dividing wall column arrangement (DDWC), the sequence including a dividing wall column (DWC) and a bottom DWC (BDWC), and the sequence including a DWC and a BDWC with top vapor recompression heat pump. These arrangements offer benefits by decreasing reboiler and condenser power consumption. Reducing the number of columns and their diameters can potentially reduce construction costs. The result also showed that operating cost could be reduced most significantly through novel combinations of internal and external heat integration: bottom dividing wall columns employing a top vapor recompression heat pump.

• KEPCO Journal on Electric Power and Energy
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.33-38
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• 2018

This study applied upgrades to the processes of a 10 MW wet amine $CO_2$ capture pilot plant and conducted performance evaluation. The 10 MW $CO_2$ Capture Pilot Plant is a facility that applies 1/50 of the combustion flue gas produced from a 500 MW coal-fired power plant, and is capable of capturing up to 200 tons of $CO_2$. This study aimed to quantitatively measure efficiency improvements of post-combustion $CO_2$ capture facilities resulting from process upgrades to propose reliable data for the first time in Korea. The key components of the process upgrades involve absorber intercooling, lean/rich amine exchanger efficiency improvements, reboiler steam TVR (Thermal Vapor Recompression), and lean amine MVR (Mechanical Vapor Recompression). The components were sequentially applied to test the energy reduction effect of each component. In addition, the performance evaluation was conducted with the absorber $CO_2$ removal efficiency maintained at the performance evaluation standard value proposed by the IEA-GHG ($CO_2$ removal rate: 90%). The absorbent used in the study was the highly efficient KoSol-5 that was developed by KEPCO (Korea Electric Power Corporation). From the performance evaluation results, it was found that the steam consumption (regeneration energy) for the regeneration of the absorbent decreased by $0.38GJ/tonCO_2$ after applying the process upgrades: from $2.93GJ/ton\;CO_2$ to $2.55GJ/tonCO_2$. This study confirmed the excellent performance of the post-combustion wet $CO_2$ capture process developed by KEPCO Research Institute (KEPRI) within KEPCO, and the process upgrades validated in this study are expected to substantially reduce $CO_2$ capture costs when applied in demonstration $CO_2$ capture plants.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.21-27
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• 2018

FRN (Full range Naphtha) is distilled from crude oil in a Naphtha Splitter Unit and is separated into the Light Straight Naphtha, Heavy Naphtha, and kerosene according to the boiling point in sequence. This separation is conducted using a series of binary-like columns. In this separation method, the energy consumed in the reboiler is used to separate the heaviest components and most of this energy is discarded as vapor condensation in the overhead cooler. In this study, the first two columns of the separation process are replaced with the Petlyuk column. A structural design was exercised by a stage to stage computation with an ideal tray efficiency in the equilibrium condition. Compared to the performance of a conventional system of 3-column model, the design outcome indicates that the procedure is simple and efficient because the composition of the liquid component in the column tray was designed to be similar to the equilibrium distillation curve. An analysis of the performance of the new process indicated an energy saving of 12.3% under same total number of trays and with a saving of the initial investment cost.