Modelling Example

Consider the binary distillation column at steady-state

operation:

QC

p
D,XD
R
F,XF
(5 ideal stages)

QR
L,XL

Question:
How can we model this process unit?
 Modelling Example

1) What is the modelling goal?

predict over-head product flow and composition as
accurately as possible.

2) What physical phenomena are occuring in the process?

vapour-liquid equilibrium.
heat transfer.

3) What physical laws must be obeyed by the process?

conservation of mass.
conservation of energy.
conservation of component species (no reaction).

4) What assumptions can we make?

only two species present (XA + XB = 1).
complete condensation in condenser.
heat losses are negligible.
equimolal over-flow (Hvap the same for both
species).
feed is all liquid at temperature of feed tray.
constant relative volatility.
 Modelling Example

Our model equations consist of:

1) material balances,
mass balance
F = L+D
XFF = XLL+XDD
component balance

qvapour = R+D
internal vapour flow

2) energy balances,
energy balance
QR = Q C

QR = Hvap qvapour
QC = Hvap qvapour
creation and condensation
of internal vapour flow
 Modelling Example

How will we represent the vapour-liquid equilibria

within the column?

Some possibilities:

Fenske-Eduljee
Smokers
McCabe-Thiele
- tray-by-tray material balances.
Ponchon-Savarit
- tray-by-tray material and energy
balances.

Since we want an accurate model, but do not have the

necessary detailed thermodynamic information for each
of trays, lets try McCabe-Thiele.

Then for each ideal tray we will need:

1) component balance.
2) a vapour-liquid equilibrium expression.
 Modelling Example

3) tray balances (numbering from the column top),

enriching section
R (XD - X1) = qvapour (XD -Y2)
R (X1 - X2) = qvapour (Y2 - Y3)
feed tray
F XF + R X2 - (F+R) X3 = qvapour (Y3 - Y4)

(F+R) (X3 - X4) = qvapour (Y4 - Y5)

stripping section
(F+R) X4 - LXL = qvapour Y5
reboiler

4) vapour-liquid equilibria,

(1 + ( - 1) * X1) * XD = * X1
(1 + ( - 1) * X2) * Y2 = * X2
(1 + ( - 1) * X3) * Y3 = * X3
(1 + ( - 1) * X4) * Y4 = * X4
(1 + ( - 1) * XL) * Y5 = * XL
 Modelling Example

Thus, our model is:

F - L-D=0
X F F - X LL - XD D = 0
qvapour - R - D = 0

QR - QC = 0
QR - Hvap qvapour = 0
QC - Hvap qvapour = 0

R (XD - X1) - qvapour (XD -Y2) = 0

R (X1 - X2) - qvapour (Y2 - Y3) = 0
F XF + R X2 - (F+R) X3 - qvapour (Y3 - Y4) = 0
(F+R) (X3 - X4) - qvapour (Y4 - Y5) = 0
(F+R) X4 - LXL - qvapour Y5 = 0

(1 + ( - 1) * X1) * XD - * X1 = 0
(1 + ( - 1) * X2) * Y2 - * X2 = 0
(1 + ( - 1) * X3) * Y3 - * X3 = 0
(1 + ( - 1) * X4) * Y4 - * X4 = 0
(1 + ( - 1) * XL) * Y5 - * XL = 0
 An Engineering Example

Then for our steady-state binary distillation column:

QC

p
D,XD
R
F,XF

QR
L,XL

Goal:
Increase distillate flowrate while maintaining
purity.

Questions:
What process variables can we independently
change to improve operation?
 An Engineering Example

1) What is fixed by upstream processes or process

equipment?
column feed & operation

XF , F, P
, Hvap physical properties

2) What process variables can we manipulate directly

and how
would they effectreflux
XD and
rateD?
(X , D )
D

R distillate rate (XD , R )

D bottoms rate (X ? , D )
D

L condenser duty (Q , X if R ,D ?)
R D

QC reboiler duty (QC , XD if R ,D ?)

QR
 An Engineering Example

It is clear that not all of these variables may be

independently manipulated. Two very natural questions,
from a process operations point of view, would be:

How many of these process variables (R, D, L, QC,

QCR) can we manipulate independently to achieve
our process objectives?
Which of the manipulated variables should be used
to operate the process?

We will deal with the first question.

Our process model contains a large amount of

information regarding how the process variables are
inter-related. How could we use this information to
determine the number of process variables that may be
independently manipulated?
 An Engineering Example

We can use the mass balance to eliminate the column

bottoms flowrate (L) from all of the equations in our
process model. Substitution of the mass balance:

L = F-D note that L no

longer appears in
into the component balance yields: this equation.

XFF = XL(F-D) + XDD

or:
XL = (XFF-XDD) / (F-D)

We could follow the same procedure to eliminate the

bottoms flowrate (L) from every other equation in the
process model.

Notice that in our re-arranged model, both L and XL have

become dependent upon the values of the other process
variables.

If we continued this process of using each individual

equation to eliminate some of the process variables from
the remaining model equations, we would have a new
set of equations which explicitly show the dependent
process variables as functions of the independent
variables.