FRAMEWORK FOR DESIGNING FEASIBLE SCHEMES OF MULTICOMPONENT AZEOTROPICDISTILLATION

Our ultimate aim is to develop a general methodology for assigning fea sible separation schemes of multicomponent azeotropic distillation A f ramework is presented for creating feasible distillation schemes which is the first part of the design procedure. The proposed methodology i s demonstrated on a four-component mixture with six binary and three t ernary azeotropes. The main difficulty in extending the method is the impossibility of the visualisation of the separating sets and the dist illation region in higher dimensions. The application of the algebraic topology will provide the means for constructing the distillation bou ndary structures in systems of more than four components.