Fig. 1. Reversible column prole for a binary system.
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shifted to the right on the temperatureenthalpy diagram by
adding the actual heat loads of the main condenser and reboiler. Targets for intermediate heating and cooling can then be read directly from the curve. By analogy with pinch analysis, this diagram is often known as the column grand composite curve (Dhole and Linnhoff, 1993). For binary systems the calculation of the reversible prole is a straightforward task, either computing equilibrium data or using results from converged column simulations. The procedure involves the solution of mass and energy balances for an envelope over a column section from a chosen stage to the top of the column (Fig. 2b). To meet reversible conditions at the column stage the liquid leaving the stage and the vapour entering the stage are considered to be at equilibrium, yi Ki xi . The minimum liquid and vapour trafc are then computed by solving the mass balance across the envelope, for both components: Vmin y1 Lmin x1 DxD,1
Vmin y2 Lmin x2 DxD,2
The enthalpy decit of the reversible column section is then
computed from Hdef Hliq,min Hvap,min HD
Fig. 2. Steps required to generate column targets.
For most practical multicomponent separation tasks it is therefore
impossible to devise a reversible separation scheme based on a single distillation column. A procedure to obtain rigorous asreversible-as-possible column congurations for multicomponent sharp-split separations has been developed by Koehler et al. (1991) for estimating minimum reux conditions, but this requires extensive calculation of reversible column sections and determination of column pinch points. Along the same line, Bausa et al. (1998) proposed the rectication body method to calculate the minimum energy demand of distillation columns. More recently Danilov et al. (2007) and Petlyuk et al. (2008) proposed a general algorithm to calculate minimum reux ratios for simple distillation columns and the construction of reversible distillation trajectories. 1.1. Temperatureenthalpy proles It has been proposed that reversible column proles can be used to estimate the loads of side condensers and side reboilers of real columns, known as targeting, for columns operating above minimum reux conditions (Dhole and Linnhoff, 1993; Manley et al., 1992; Bandyopadhyay et al., 1998; Demirel, 2006). The use of reversible column proles to target the side exchanger heat load for actual columns is shown in Fig. 2a. Mass and energy balances for reversible column sections are used to compute the reversible heat load prole. This prole is then
A similar approach is used for the bottom section of the
column, and together they form the reversible temperature enthalpy prole. The extension of this procedure to multicomponent systems is more difcult due to differences in the composition proles between the actual and reversible column. Furthermore, the as-reversible-as-possible column has an adiabatic irreversible section, and its identication is not straightforward (Koehler et al., 1991). Aguirre et al. (1997) used the near-reversible proles obtained by Koehler et al. (1991) to optimise the location of side exchanger subject to both thermodynamic and economic objectives, for columns operating under minimum reux conditions. To overcome the complexity of calculations required for multicomponent columns under actual process conditions, Dhole and Linnhoff (1993) proposed a methodology based on pseudo-binary splits between the light key and heavy key components. In this approach the key-component data from a multicomponent sharpsplit distillation simulation are used in Eqs. (1) and (2) to calculate the prole as for a binary system. The main advantage of this procedure is that the results from a converged column simulation, i.e. the equilibrium composition and temperature proles, can be used to compute the multicomponent near-reversible column prole. However, the shape and the targets depend on the denition of the key components, and two very signicant assumptions are made when using converged column simulations to obtain the proles:
The minimum vapour and liquid ows at a reversible stage are
a function of the key component equilibrium compositions
only. The specic enthalpies (per mole) of the liquid and vapour streams under reversible conditions are the same as under actual column conditions, although the compositions might not be the same.
A similar approach was used by Bandyopadhyay et al. (1998),
who however improved the prole procedure by introducing a correction for the difference of composition between feed stream and feed stage in the actual column. The major problem of using reversible column proles for the identication of scope for side reboiling and side condensing is