Debottlenecking of an extractive distillation column for aromatics recovery: Effect of feed pre-vaporization

Madhura Rewatkar is a Research Scientist in the refining research and development (R&D) division of Reliance Industries Ltd. She has 3 yr of experience in the modeling and simulation of separation, aromatics and solvent recovery processes. Ms. Rewatkar earned a BTech degree in chemical engineering from the Laxminarayan Institute of Technology (LIT) in Nagpur, India, along with an MTech degree from the Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology in Nagpur, India. She has also worked as a Research Fellow at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)–Kharagpur.

Prafull Patidar is a Senior Manager in the R&D division of Reliance Industries Ltd. He has 9 yr of industrial experience in separation processes, and in the process modeling and simulation of petrochemical and refinery units. Dr. Patidar earned a PhD in reactive distillation from IIT–Bombay.

Rahul Patil is the Lead Research Scientist in the R&D division of Reliance Industries Ltd. He has more than 16 yr of experience in the petroleum refining and petrochemical industries. His professional interests include the debottlenecking and optimization of petroleum refinery and petrochemical units, the application of computational fluid dynamics and process modeling tools, and the modeling and simulation of these units. Patil earned a Bch degree in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, India; and an MTech degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

Ajay Gupta is the Principal Researcher in the R&D division of Reliance industries Ltd. He has 35 yr of experience in the petroleum and petrochemical industries. His areas of interest include modeling simulations, advanced process control, reactor hydrodynamics, and the scale-up of equipment. Dr. Gupta earned BTech and MTech degrees, as well as his PhD, from IIT–Delhi.

Dr. Madhukar Garg is the President of Refining and Petrochemical R&D at Reliance Industries Ltd. Before joining Reliance, Dr. Garg was the Director of the Indian Institute of Petroleum, Dehradun. He has more than 48 yr of experience in the petroleum and petrochemical industries. His areas of specialization includes solvent extraction, process integration, advanced control, simulation and modeling. He is an elected Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Garg earned a BTech degree from LIT in Nagpur, India; an MTech degree from IIT–Kanpur and a PhD from the University of Melbourne, Australia.