SEPARATION REGIONS AND PROCESSES OF ZEOTROPIC AND AZEOTROPIC TERNARY DISTILLATION

The rigorous calculation of top and bottom fractions of a multicomponent distillation is very time consuming and involved as it can only be done iteratively, and convergence problems are often encountered, especially in azeotropic systems. This article presents a method for the easy determination of possible top and bottom fractions of a ternary distillation. This method, which works for zeotropic as well as for azeotropic mixtures, is especially useful in the first steps of process synthesis and design since impossible separations can be determined and thus excluded from further analysis so that work can be concentrated on feasible processes. A very important application of the method developed in this article is to the design and analysis of processes for complete separation of binary azeotropic mixtures by use of an entrainer (for example, Azeotropic Distillation and Extractive Distillation). Knowledge of the separation regions in the distillation diagram allows for the development of a generalized process and the formulation of criteria for entrainer selection. The effectiveness of the method is demonstrated on a number of industrial important processes.