A distillation column with the possibility of heat exchange on every tray (a fully diabatic column) is optimized in the sense of minimizing its total entropy production. This entropy production counts the interior losses due to heat and mass flow as well as the entropy generated in the heat exchangers. It is observed that the optimal heating distribution, i.e. the heat exchange required on each...

LabVIEW and SIMULINK are two most widely used graphical programming environments for designing digital signal processing and control systems. Unlike conventional text-based programming languages such as C, C++ and MATLAB, graphical programming involves block-based code developments, allowing a more efficient mechanism to build and analyze control systems. In this paper a LabVIEW environment has...

The reactive-extractive distillation (RED) has the advantages of combining beneficial features both reaction and separation processes. Relative to conventional reactive or extractive distillation-based processes, RED is also less energy intensive as it relies on heat produced for subsequent process. Therefore, application ternary azeotropic become subject popular interest, evident by increasing...

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...

The minimum energy requirements of six different heat-integrated multi-effect and three non-integrated distillation arrangements for separating a ternary mixture have been considered. The focus of the paper is on a heat-integrated complex distillation configuration; called a multi-effect prefractionator arrangement. The comparison of the different arrangements is based on the minimum vapour flo...

An unconstrained model predictive control (MPC) strategy is presented for single input-single output (SISO) control of a reactive distillation column. The predictive model of the MPC is based on the autoregressive moving average (ARX) model structure, whose parameters are updated on-line using the process measurement information. The design and performance of the control strategy is evaluated b...

This paper studies the synthesis and the design of methanol recovery system for TAME reactive distillation process using extraction column with water as a solvent. The design of the extraction column system has not been studied in the literature. The effect of operating conditions such as solvent flowrate, extraction column temperature, and number of equilibrium trays are studied. It is found t...

This paper deals with the design of mixed thermally coupled-heat integrated distillation sequences. The approach considers from conventional columns (each distillation column with a condenser and a reboiler) to fully thermally coupled systems (only one reboiler and one condenser in the entire system). A discussion about superstructure generation and the convenience of using a representation bas...

Biodiesel is a fuel made from vegetable oils, animal fats and microbial oil (algae, bacteria and fungi). The raw materials are converted to biodiesel through a chemical reaction involving alcohol and catalyst. The purpose of the present work is to present an efficient process using reactive distillation columns applied to biodiesel production. Reactive distillation is the simultaneous implement...