OPTIMIZATION OF PRESSURE-SWING DISTILLATION FOR ANHYDROUS ETHANOL PURIFICATION BY THE SIMULATED ANNEALING ALGORITHM

The present study addresses the novel application of the simulated annealing algorithm (SAA) to optimize the pressure-swing distillation (PSD) process for anhydrous ethanol purification. Three different softwares (Aspen Plus (R), Excel (R) and Matlab (R)) were integrated to simultaneously optimize seven design and operational variables. The configuration with the best TAC represented a 40.2% saving per year in comparison to the non-optimized PSD. Such reduction was achieved by using the higher acceptance probability and the slower temperature decrement. This saving is mainly related to operational cost reductions, a fact that evidences the viability of using the herein described optimization methodology to improve the PSD design.