Simulation study on high purity 3-methylpyridine produced from side stream of dividing wall column

Abstract Considering the high energy consumption problem in the conventional distillation separation of the traditional process for preparing 3-methylpyridine by the hydrogenation of 2-methylglutaronitrile, this paper proposes a new purification process using a dividing wall column. Under the premise of meeting the product purity, with the equipment energy consumption as the optimization target, this paper employs Aspen Plus V14.0 software to simulate and optimize the conventional distillation and continuous dividing wall column separation process. The simulation results show that compared with the conventional distillation separation process, the new dividing wall column process can save 21.02% of the condenser heat load, 26.34% of the reboiler heat load, and 23.71% of the comprehensive energy consumption.