Process Intensification in Distillation Systems: Main Trends for Improving Petrochemical Process Performance

Economic and environmental considerations have encouraged studies on distillation processes, which play an outstanding role among other thermal separation processes in the petrochemical industry, focused on processintensification-based innovative engineering solutions. Various techniques, such as dividing wall columns, reactive distillation, internal heat-integrated distillation, HiGee distillation column, and cyclic column have been studied and reported. This mini review highlights the current status of these techniques, their applicability, main limitations and challenges and perspectives in the field of petrochemical engineering.