Heat pump distillation

Product Description: Heat pump distillation technology replaces the conventional process’s consumption of one ton of steam with 40–120 kWh of electricity (depending on the temperature difference between the tower top and reboiler). Product Keywords: Heat Pump Distillation

Product Details

Principle of Heat Pump Distillation

Leveraging the company’s flagship multi‑stage centrifugal steam compressor, the vapor at the top of a distillation column can be superheated and pressurized. The compressed steam is then directly routed to the reboiler for heating, enabling the efficient recovery of a substantial portion of the top‑column vapor’s latent heat while consuming only a minimal amount of electrical energy. This approach not only reduces steam consumption in the reboiler but also lowers the cooling load at the column top, delivering dual energy savings.

Core Equipment

Due to the significant temperature difference between the top and bottom of the tower, conventional single-stage centrifugal compressors cannot meet the requirements. After years of practical experience, Turbovap’s independently developed and manufactured multi‑stage centrifugal compressors have achieved mature applications across various industries, providing robust equipment support for heat‑pump distillation.

Two-stage compressor

Three-stage compressor

Four-stage compressor

Process Description


Conventional distillation	Heat pump distillation

Energy-saving advantages

Because heat‑pump distillation technology replaces the conventional process’s consumption of one ton of steam with 40–120 kWh of electricity (depending on the temperature difference between the top and bottom of the column), it delivers significant energy savings in most applications. Taking a 42 t/h ethylene glycol distillation column as an example, the energy‑saving benefits after adopting heat‑pump distillation are as follows:

Energy-Saving Distillation Performance of Ethylene Glycol
Project	Hourly rate	Unit price (excluding tax)	Total
Ethylene glycol flow rate	42t/h
Steam conservation	20.7 tons/h	200 yuan per ton	4,140 yuan/hour
Electricity bill usage	2360kwh	0.4 yuan/kWh	944 yuan/h
Reduce cooling water	478.5 tons/h	0.2 yuan/ton	95.7 yuan/h
Theoretical hourly energy-saving amount			3,292 yuan/hour
Annual working hours			8,000 hours/year
Annual cost savings			26.33 million yuan