MCSTILL - Continuous Multicomponent Distillation Column

This problem is similar to CONSTILL except that three components benzene, xylene and toluene are considered. 

The component balance equations for reflux drum, column enriching section, feed plate, column stripping section and the column base and reboiler are very similar to those derived previously for the binary distillation example CONSTILL, but are now expressed in multicomponent terms as described in Sec. 3.3.S.4. 

Thus for any component i of the mixture in the enriching section of the column 

The simulation is based on a fixed vapour boil up rate. Component balance equations are represented for benzene and toluene . The xylene concentrations are determined by difference, based on the sum of the mole fractions being equal to one. 

Note that the plate numbering in the program is slightly different to that shown in Fig. 1, owing to the use of the vector notation to include both the reflux drum and the column base. In the program, index number 1 is used to denote the reflux drum and product distillate, and index Nplate+1 is used to denote the reboiler and bottoms product. This is convenient in the subsequent plotting of the steady state composition profiles in the column. Both Nplate and the feed plate location Fplate are important parameters in the simulation of the resulting steady state concentration profiles and the resultant column optimisation. 

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MCSTILL - Continuous Multicomponent Distillation Column System... 

Continuous multicomponent distillation simulation is illustrated by the simulation example MCSTILL, where the parametric runs facility of MADONNA provides a valuable means of assessing the effect of each parameter on the final steady state. It is thus possible to rapidly obtain the optimum steady state settings for total plate number, feed plate number and column reflux ratio via a simple use of sliders. 

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