A study of the optimal sequencing of multicomponent distillation trains

The process design of chemical processes may be divided into two broad phases: one, a synthesis phase, is all activities associated with the selection of the process route or configuration together with the selection of the type of process units required for a given processing function; the other is an analysis phase in which the design and optimisation of each unit within a given configuration or process scheme is established. Historically, the discipline of chemical engineering has been concerned primarily with the analysis phase of process design; in that it pioneered the concept of breaking down processes into unique processing steps or 'unit operations'. Most of these unit operations have now been developed to a very high degree of sophistication. However, the synthesis phase has not received the same degree of attention. For example, the selection of the optimal process route for a given process function from among a number of possible process routes has been made to a certain extent upon the process designer's experience and/or intuition, there being no formal techniques available to assist in the selection. Process synthesis has been regarded more or less as an art and consequently it has received very little attention in chemical engineering research. [Continues.]