ON THE MINLP APPROACH FOR OPTIMAL-DESIGN OF CHEMICAL-ENGINEERING SYSTEMS .2. SYNTHESIS OF DISTILLATION SEQUENCES

In this paper the MINLP method proposed in Part (I) is illustrated by applying it to; the synthesis problem of non-sharp distillation sequen ces. A MINLP formulation for the synthesis of distillation sequences w ith non-sharp separation is proposed. In this Formulation the recoveri es of the key components are introduced as optimization variables and this makes it possible to synthesize a distillation sequence with spec ified component recoveries, and at the same time, renders the MINLP pr oblem nonconvex. The solution procedure is illustrated with three exam ple problems.