On the Reactive Distillation Modeling and Dynamic Simulation

A reactive distillation plant is one of the most important and “delicate” functional components of a complex chemical plant. While its steady state modeling and simulation tend to become a standard today by using some well known dedicated software tools, only little is known about the dynamic simulation in the open literature. This paper presents the principles for a modern modeling approach with respect to reactive distillation processes, including the potential phase splitting detection. It is based on a classical model (pseudo-homogeneous) in connection with a robust and reliable phase splitting algorithm (through homotopy-continuation method), performed at each simulation step. A simple case-study (by applying this approach to a reactive distillation column for waste water treatment) is briefly presented. All simulation scenarios revealed a good agreement between simulation results and the real system behavior, much better than using a classical pseudo-homogeneous mathematical model.