Exergy analysis of a reactive extraction process

Abstract This work proposes a methodology to perform exergy analysis of an intensified isothermal reactive extraction process. The method involves two steps. The first one includes the modeling and adaptation of a material utilization diagram (MUD) to allow the estimation of exergy losses and gains for each component and for the overall process. In the second step, the utilization of exergy of the different reactive extraction configurations was estimated through the calculation of exergy indicators. The strategy estimates the effect of the operation and design parameters on the indicators, and determinates the process configuration with the best utilization of exergy. The method was applied to the butyl acetate and n-amyl-acetate reactive extractions processes, in single and multiple stage operations. For both cases of study, improvements in the exergy indicators were obtained by using a countercurrent configuration with two stages. Exergy indicator of 88.45% and 82.97% for butyl acetate and n-amyl-acetate, respectively, were determined for product stream. The method proposed can support the search for optimal operation and design parameters, and help the development of highly efficient reactive extraction processes.