Separation of Multicomponent Mixtures

Abstract

Rectification is the main separation technology used for purifying the products in the chemical and petroleum industry. Development of distillation equipments and processes is important because of their vast energy needs and their incidence. Recently, systematic synthesis of separation sequences is developed significantly. This paper presents a case study of the separation of a multicomponent cracked gas. A separation system created by heuristic rules and an “optimal” structure characterized by minimal costs were compared. Rules that can be generalized based on the actual example of the separation sequence synthesis are emphasized. The separation structure developed by applying these generalized rules unambiguously depend on the thermodynamics properties of the multicomponent mixture and the specification of the products.