This work is enlightened by recent progresses in heat pump concepts, proposed to upcycle waste heat to compensate energy supply, A novel synergistic 4-column methanol distillation scheme is developed by using heat pump upon double-effect distillation through an intermediate heater to shunt reboiler heat load. Compared with the original scheme, the synergistic one can considerably reduce utility depletion as well as operating costs. The success of adding heat pump to double-effect encourages extending applications to process industrial communities other than methanol purification.
