Design and Simulation of Efficient and Energy-Saving Acetonitrile Continuous Refining Process

A novel efficient, energy saving acetonitrile continuous refining process was designed according to the feature of the original process based on the current propylene-ammoxidation process in domestic that produces acrylonitrile with acetonitrile as byproduct to solve the problems such as highly waste of material and energy, low product recovery, and so on. By process and energy saving analysis, some special distillation technologies such as pressure-swing distillation, multi-effect distillation were applied in novel process. Meanwhile, the large general process simulation software was used to simulate and optimize the designed process, and the best process operation parameters were obtained. Simulation results showed that the product quality indicator of novel process achieves the international superior grade, and saves 39.6% energy compared with the original process, while its recovery was improved to 93%.