The determination of distillation column configurations that consume the least total energy is studied. The novel contributions of the proposed designmethodology for finding globalminimum energy column sequences presented in this article include: (1) the definition of a total stripping line distance function for any sequence, (2) a robust energy targeting strategy that provides a continuously d...

Tertiary-amyl methyl ether (TAME) is a potential gasoline additive that can be advantageously synthesized using the reactive distillation (RD) technology. This work emphasizes on non-linear effects in dynamic simulations of reactive distillation column. For certain configurations, dynamic simulation with equilibrium stage (EQ) model leads to sustained oscillations (limit cycles) which have been...

The thermal efficiency of a distillation column may be improved by permitting heat exchange on every tray rather than only in the reboiler and the condenser. Thermodynamic length optimizations on discrete systems specify the optimal temperature of each tray and consequently the amount of heat to be added or withdrawn in order to maintain that temperature.

In this work, we analyze the control properties of thermally coupled reactive distillation sequences and thermally coupled extractive distillation sequences in comparison with conventional reactive and extractive distillation configurations. All sequences have been designed using a multi objective genetic algorithm with restrictions. We study the theoretical control properties of those schemes ...

A reactive distillation plant is one of the most important and “delicate” functional components of a complex chemical plant. While its steady state modeling and simulation tend to become a standard today by using some well known dedicated software tools, only little is known about the dynamic simulation in the open literature. This paper presents the principles for a modern modeling approach wi...

Through its ‘Column Targeting Tools’ the Aspen plus simulator performs the ‘Thermal Analysis’ for rigorous column (RadFrac) calculations and produce Column Grand Composite Curves (CGCC) and exergy loss profiles. The CGCC displays the net enthalpies for the actual and ideal operations at each stage, and the cold and hot heat utility requirements, while the exergy loss profiles indicate the level...