Design of dividing wall columns for butanol recovery in a thermochemical biomass to butanol process

In this work, ternary and quaternary dividing wall column (DWC) configurations for the separation of a multicomponent feed stream from a novel thermochemical lignocellulosic biomass to butanol process are designed, modeled and assessed. The goal is to separate the feed into four major products, with a key product being a biobutanol rich stream. Due to the complexity of DWC models, a shortcut modeling approach based on the minimum energy …