Expanding the scope of distillation network synthesis using superstructure-based methods

We study two new challenging problems in distillation network synthesis: (1) how to synthesize a distillation sequence when streams can have variable, including zero, component flows, which is common when the distillation network is simultaneously designed with the reactor network, and (2) how to couple the reactor and distillation networks, especially when there are multiple coupling streams. We introduce a superstructure-based method for distillation sequence synthesis using a “matrix” representation. We use binary variables and mixed-integer constraints to determine the separation task for each distillation column accounting for the possible zero component flows. Departing from existing methods, the proposed approach yields the optimal coupling configuration of distillation and reactor networks.