THE GEOMETRY OF SEPARATION PROCESSES - A HORSE-CARROT THEOREM FOR STEADY FLOW SYSTEMS

The horse-carrot theorem bounding the entropy production in processes with a fixed number of relaxations is extended to steady flow processe s. The dissipation turns out to be related to a path of flows rather t han states. The example of fractional distillation is presented and sh ows how null directions for the geometry turn out to be useful in the analysis. The implied distillation column design offers potentially si gnificant energy savings.