Control of multicomponent distillation process

Summary

• 1. By calculation and experimental verification, it has been found that there are sharp deformations of the temperature fields in the vicinities of regimes corresponding to the cut points between the limiting components, with the formation of regions with regimes of maximum purity (RMP regions).

• 2. In the design of towers for sharp fractionation of multicomponent mixtures, it is necessary to design for a certain reasonable excess number of trays in each section, to permit the formation of a sufficiently broad RMP region that can be placed under automatic control to ensure clean separation of the mixture into distillate and residue at the desired cut point.

• 3. It has been shown that, by using the properties of the RMP regions, it is possible to design an automatic control system that will give sharp fractionation at a given cut point.

• 4. Commercial tests of such an automatic control system have confirmed its operability and effectiveness.