Reactive distillation is an excellent example of recent advances in process intensification. It combines reaction and separation operations in one piece of equipment. This paper studies the steady-state economic optimum design of a chemical process with a generic exothermic reversible reaction A+B↔C+D for two different process flowsheets: a conventional multi-unit reactor/separator/recycle stru...

The development of a reactive distillation process for the production of n-butyl acetate by transesterification of methyl acetate with n-butanol is presented. Thermodynamic aspects of the quaternary system n-butyl acetate – n-butanol – methyl acetate – methanol are discussed and UNIQUAC interaction parameters derived using the Dortmund Data Bank (DDB) are given. The reaction kinetics of the het...

We report that, for the generation of a secure cryptographic key from correlations established through a noisy quantum channel, the quantum and classical advantage distillation procedures are not equivalent, when coherent eavesdropping attacks are duly taken into account. The quantum procedure can tolerate markedly more noise in the channel than the classical procedure. One of the important pro...

Reactive distillation Reactive Distillation (RD) is a combination of reaction and distillation in a single vessel owing to which it enjoys a number of specific advantages over conventional sequential approach of reaction followed by distillation or other separation techniques. Improved selectivity, increased conversion, better heat control, effective utilization of reaction heat, scope for diff...

Adsorptive separation techniques are significantly energy efficient in comparison to conventional thermal such as distillation. Despite extensive research and development activities undertaken for mixed-gas adsorption, the use of adsorption multicomponent liquid mixtures is still limited. A major barrier lack accurate thermodynamic models, which form scientific foundation process simulation sys...

In previous work, several significant improvements in the measurement of distillation curves for complex fluids were introduced. The modifications to the classical measurement provide for (1) temperature and volume measurement(s) of low uncertainty, and most important, (2) a composition-explicit data channel in addition to the usual temperature–volume relationship. This latter modification is a...

Coal tar is obtained by cooling the gas that is formed during the destructive distillation of coal to approximately ambient temperature. It is a black, viscous liquid composed primarily of a complex mixture of condensed-ring aromatic hydrocarbons. It may contain phenolic compounds, aromatic nitrogen bases and their alkyl derivatives, and paraffinic and olefinic hydrocarbons. Coal-tar pitch is t...

Essential oils are natural liquid products obtained from plants by hydroor steam distillation. Oils contain from dozens to hundreds of components – secondary plant metabolites. The essential oils are used as natural aromas in food and toiletry, and due to medicinal properties, many of them are used in conventional medicine and aromatherapy. Components of the essential oils are first of all mono...

Non-sooting counterflow diffusion flames have been studied both computationally and experimentally, using either JP-8, or a six-component JP-8 surrogate mixture, or its individual components. The computational study employs a counterflow diffusion flame model, the solution of which is coupled with arc length continuation to examine a wide variety of inlet conditions and to calculate extinction ...

The separation of multicomponent mixtures by batch distillation generally requires the sequential processing of several splits in one column. The sequencing of the splits and the choice of the column configuration, e.g. regular or inverse column, has a substantial impact on the economic potential of the process. Beside these structural design decisions the profitability of the process is furthe...