Distillation has remained an important separation technology for the chemical process industries. In 1997 it was reported in the journal Chemical Engineering that about 95% of all worldwide separation processes use this technology. In the USA alone, some 40000 distillation columns represent a capital investment of about US $8 billion. They consume the energy equivalent of approximately 1 billio...

Batch distillation in a column with a middle vessel can avoid many of the disadvantages associated with the regular batch distillation processes. In this paper we present an experimental investigation of the separation of a zeotropic ternary mixture via total reflux operation and of the separation of an azeotropic binary mixture via batchwise extractive distillation. Moreover, the results obtai...

The performance of extractive (BED) and pressure swing distillation (PSBD) for the separation of the mixture acetone(A)-methanol(B) forming a minimum azeotrope are compared. For the BED, where the solvent(S) is water, three different operational policies (basic, modified, controlled) are studied. For the PSBD the double column batch stripper (DCBS) is applied with and without heat integration (...

  The simulation of distillation columns is an essential step in design, optimization, and rating. In this paper, a new procedure has been proposed for the initial estimation of column profiles based on modified Kremser’s group method for simple and/or complex columns. The effect of this initialization algorithm on simulation procedure has been studied through two examples. The results show sig...

The aim of this work was to determine a cost-optimal design the distillation unit Andrussow process. For purpose, feed with mass flow rate 121 t h−1 and concentration ca. 2 wt % hydrogen cyanide (HCN) considered. An approach for process intensification developed goal achieve desired product qualities, while minimizing organonitrile accumulation in column. simple column established base case ext...

Fundamental mass and energy balances that exist in process systems can be used in modeling of the uncertainty description of the system. This allows us to define better uncertainty descriptions to be used in robust controller design. Uncertainty descriptions obtained from such an approach are tighter than unstructured descriptions because they are made to obey physical conservation laws. This e...

Startup of distillation columns is one of the most difficult operations of chemical processes. Since it often lasts a period of time, leads to off-products and costs much energy, optimization of startup operating policies for distillation columns is of great interest in process industry. Most previous studies on column startup have been restricted to theoretical investigations such as modeling,...