The fully thermally coupled distillation column offers an alternative to conventional distillation towers, with the possibility of savings in both energy and capital costs. This innovative and promising alternative provides the opportunity to separate a multicomponent mixture into fractions with high purities merely in one column. A lack of knowledge still exists when dealing with the startup o...

The aim of this work is to implement heterogeneous azeotropic distillation schemes in a dividing wall column (DWC) for a feed mixture of water (W), acetic acid (HAC) and an organic component (X). The original design makes use of X to act as an entrainer to facilitate the separation of water and HAC, and we also propose a DWC design based on this idea. This DWC design reduces the capital cost, b...

Despite the attractive savings potential of multiple Dividing Wall Columns (mDWC), there are no reports in open literature an existing application so far. In this perspective, control mDWCs has been a rather little-investigated field. Pilot plants necessary step needed to further expand window sustainable distillation technology. This contribution aimed show that sufficiently flexible, providin...

Since the optimal design of dividing wall columns (DWC) is a highly nonlinear and multivariable problem, an appropriate solving tool is required. In this paper a multi-objective genetic algorithm with restrictions is considered to design columns with dividing walls. Also, a methodology is proposed for sizing the DWC. The proposed design methodology allows achieving appropriate designs for colum...

The analysis of the history of structured packings allows the conclusion that the innovation cycle will become faster. Based on the separation power as an alternative way to represent the performance characteristics an estimate of the next level of what might be the ultimative separation power is given. Regarding the column internals like distributors only slight improvements are expected, typi...

The ``Petlyuk'' or ``dividing-wall'' or ``fully thermally coupled'' distillation column is an interesting alternative to the conventional cascaded binary columns for separation of multi-component mixtures. However, the industrial use has been limited, and diculties in operation have been reported as one reason. With three product compositions controlled, the system has two degrees of freedom l...