SEPARATION PROCESS DESIGN AND SYNTHESIS BASED ON THERMODYNAMIC INSIGHTS

This paper presents a new methodology which employs physicochemical pr operties and their relationships to separation techniques for design a nd synthesis of separation processes. The methodology covers a wide ra nge of separation problems and consists of selection and identificatio n of separation techniques (and the corresponding separation tasks), t he sequencing of the separation tasks and the determination of appropr iate and consistent conditions of operation. For a specified multicomp onent separation problem, subsets of feasible separation techniques ar e first identified for every binary and user-specified separation task s. The number of alternatives for each separation task is reduced by s ystematically analyzing the relationships between properties, separati on technique and conditions of operation. After the final step, an est imate of the final process flowsheet is produced with a list of possib le alternatives for the separation tasks. Application of the methodolo gy is demonstrated through examples highlighting the different steps o f the methodology.