Multi Objective Optimisation for an Economical Dividing Wall Column Design

The dividing wall column is experiencing a growing interest in industry. The concern about difficult controllability vanishes further and this leads to growing demand of approved guidelines for the design which is indeed time consuming if no expert knowledge is available. In this contribution the design task of a dividing wall column is treated as multi objective optimisation. Backbone of this optimised design method is a mathematical process model verified by an extensive experimental investigation. The optimisation itself allows to identify the best trade-off designs effectively regarding investment and operating costs as well as other constraints without any limitations for a fact based investment decision.