Brownfield Plants: Molecular Sieve Purge Stream Recycling
Regeneration of the MSU columns brings about important volumes of water/ethanol vapour that must be recycled back to the distillation column in order to recover the ethanol content. This accounts for at least 20% of the whole ethanol produced being recycled.
Siftek™ can potentially be used to dehydrate the purge stream which eliminates costly recycling of ethanol at the distillation step. The net result is reduced steam consumption and plant throughput capacity expansion.
