High energy consumption during distillation is a problem in petrochemical and refining industry. Therefore, the distillation of hydrocarbons was investigated with the aim to reduce the energy consumption by applying columns with fully or partially thermally coupled heat and material flows. The elements of downstream processes were considered, such as the separation of catalytic cracking gas and the recovery of benzene from petroleum and coking coal products by extractive distillation with N-methylpyrrolidone. It was found that the thermally coupled columns applied for the separation reduced the energy consumption for catalytic cracking gas separation by up to 13.1% and for benzene recovery by up to 28.7 %.