Structural design of extended fully thermally coupled distillation columns

A structural design procedure for extended fully thermally coupled distilla tion columns is proposed and applied to the example quaternary systems of s everal combinations of relative volatility in order to show the design perf ormance. The procedure gives the optimum structure for a given quaternary s eparation, and therefore iterative computation encountered in the design us ing commercial packages is not required. Because of extra degrees of freedo m in the design of the columns, various designs can yield the same products for a given specification. The structural design of this study leads to th e most efficient design thermodynamically. With the outcome of the structur al design, thermodynamic efficiency, arrangement of main and satellite colu mns, and location of interlinking streams are also examined.