Controllability analysis of alternate schemes to complex column arrangements with thermal coupling for the separation of ternary mixtures

Thermally coupleddistillation systems (TCDS) havebeenproposed toperformdistillation separation tasks with the incentive of achieving lower energy consumption levels with respect to conventional distillation sequences. In particular, the presence of recycle streams for TCDS schemes has influenced the notion that control problemsmight be expected during the operation of those systemswith respect to the rather well-knownbehavior of conventional distillation sequences. That has been one of themain reasons for the lack of industrial implementation of thermally coupled distillation schemes. Recently, some alternatives to thermally coupled distillation arrangements that might provide better operational properties than the hermally coupled distillation schemes