Optimization of Energy Consumption in Formaldehyde Production Process Using Reboiled Absorption Process

Abstract

Formaldehyde is a crucial chemical building block in various industries, and its production often involves energy-intensive processes. This study focuses on optimizing energy consumption in formaldehyde production, explicitly employing the reboiled absorption process with a production capacity of 27,000 tons per year. The objective of this article is to develop a more energy-efficient process of formaldehyde synthesis by addition or refrigerant cycle stream to preserve the energy, reducing energy consumption and improving the sustainability of the process. The reboiled absorption process involves the absorption of formaldehyde gas into a liquid absorbent, followed by reboiling to release the absorbed formaldehyde. A comprehensive analysis of the entire production system compares unmodified and modified process simulations, heat integration, and energy analysis. Beside the energy consumption of the process, the number of stages within the absorption process contributes to the product mass flow rate of the overall process by increasing the surface area which mass transfer can occur. However, adding too many stages to the process may negatively impact the energy efficiency of the process. Therefore, optimizing energy consumption and absorption processes in formaldehyde production is essential to improve the sustainability of the process and increase the overall profitability of the production process. The results show that the proposed method dramatically improves the sustainability of CH2O synthesis by reducing overall energy consumption and emissions by 93.978%, reducing energy consumption from 153,735,360.4 kJ/h to 9,256,646.618 kJ/h. Copyright © 2024 by Authors, Published by Universitas Diponegoro and BCREC Publishing Group. This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0).