Synthesis of Distillation Column Configurations for a Multicomponent Separation

Rakesh Agrawal
Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., 7201 Hamilton Boulevard, Allentown, Pennsylvania 18195-1501
Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 1996, 35 (4), pp 1059–1071
DOI: 10.1021/ie950323h
Publication Date (Web): April 9, 1996
Copyright © 1996 American Chemical Society

Abstract

Thermally linked distillation column configurations to separate near-ideal multicomponent mixtures containing four or more components are discussed. It is shown that for sharp separation of an n-component mixture using only one reboiler and one condenser the minimum number of rectifying and stripping sections needed is 4n − 6. A stepwise procedure is proposed to obtain such distillation configurations, and a series of observations are presented which make the task of generating these configurations a little easier. It is found that, for n ≥ 4, some of these distillation configurations are missing from the known superstructures in the literature. An alternative method is proposed to obtain an n-component superstructure. The resulting superstructure has all the earlier known configurations embedded within it and contains the substructures incorporating the missing configurations. This provides a more complete superstructure for the optimization task.

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History

  • Published In Issue April 09, 1996
  • Received for review May 31, 1995
    Revised October 12, 1995
    Accepted October 30, 1995 Abstract published in Advance ACS Abstracts, February 15, 1996.

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