Recently Willis has initiated a question on cheresources forum that - Is there any energy saving if we reduce or increase the column pressure to the maximum possible extent. It was really an interesting post & I thought to write on this issue here also.

First we have to understand the question. The question is What is the impact on energy consumption during the separation of a mixture using distillation at different pressures? Let us consider a binary case of two components with fixed feed composition. So the question is what should be the pressure of distillation column for a desired recovery & purity of top & bottom products, so that energy consumption is low.

When you talk about energy consumption let us consider the gross energy required site wide so that overall impact can be assessed, I mean that every component of energy consumer should be converted finally to the fossil fuels.

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