A novel distillation design for vapor phase dimethyl ether production process

ABSTRACT The vapor phase dimethyl ether (DME) synthesis is simulated by hysys process simulation software, and relevant cost analysis is also conducted. Based on cost estimation results, it is found that capital investment of the classic DME process is greatly influenced by the distillation towers and operating costs. Accordingly, to solve these problems, an innovative DME process based on a thermally coupled distillation sequence in vapor phase is proposed in this work. The results clearly demonstrated that the novel proposed process leads to 47.9% and 39.7% reductions in operating and capital costs as compared with the conventional DME process, respectively. © 2013 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.