THE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN THERMODYNAMIC PROPERTY MEASUREMENT, USE AND DEVELOPMENT OF MULTICOMPONENT DISTILLATION COLUMN DESIGN

During the development of Davy's Butanediol process, close collaboration between the teams at Davy R & D in Stockton and Davy McKee London enabled the process optimisation of the distillation sections to be quickly and efficiently verified. As part of the programme the VLE data were measured and the interaction parameters for the equation of state were generated. Preliminary process designs and flowsheets were developed using the data as part of the simulation programme. The multicomponent distillation column designs were then verified as part of a pilot scale demonstration of the process using real feedstocks. The result is that Davy now has a physical property data bank and computer simulation programmes that have been confirmed in a fully calibrated pilot column with real feedstock and from which full-scale design predictions can be made with confidence.