Toyo Engineering Corp. (Toyo; Chiba, www.toyo-eng.co.jp) has been awarded a contract to commercialize an energy-saving distillation system, called SuperHIDiC, which was patented in 2011. The contract is for a distillation column in a methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) production plant to be constructed by Maruzen Petrochemical Co. Ltd. (Ichihara City, Chiba, Japan).
Advancing the concept of HIDiC and applying well-proven distillation and heat-transfer technologies, Toyo developed SuperHIDiC, a distillation system that produces high-economic efficiency while retaining the maintainability of normal distillation columns. SuperHIDiC enables 40–60% energy savings in many cases within the distillation process by providing optimal internal heat exchange (for more details, see Chem. Eng., January 2012, p. 10; www.chemengonline.com/chementator/8828.html).
Taking this opportunity to carry out commercialization, Toyo will strive to expand the application of SuperHIDiC to various distillation columns, thus helping reduce energy usage in oil refineries and petrochemical plants.