F. Soares Pinto et al.

/ Chemical Engineering Science 66 (2011) 29202934

Fig. 1. Reversible column prole for a binary system.

2921

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