Dynamic behavior of the intensified alternative configurations for quaternary distillation

Process intensification emerges as an important tool in the synthesis of multicomponent distillation configurations aimed at the reduction of the energy use and capital costs. Operational and fixed costs savings coupled with simplicity and controllability design configurations appear as an essential characteristic for industrial acceptance of intensified configurations. Following the aforementioned principles, two intensified configurations for the separation of quaternary mixture, were considered. These configurations were recognized as a valid alternative to overcome the complexity of the quaternary Petlyuk scheme. The study of the dynamics and control properties represent an important research issue in the analysis of new configurations to prove their effective applicability. The theoretical control properties of the alternative intensified configurations were obtained using the singular value decomposition technique in all frequency domain. In order to complete the control study, the distillation schemes were subjected to closed-loop dynamic simulations. The results show that there are cases in which the intensified sequences do not only provide energy savings, but also may offer dynamic advantages in comparison to the conventional four-component scheme. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.