RAND-Based Formulations for Isothermal Multiphase Flash

Abstract

Summary Two algorithms are proposed for isothermal multiphase flash. These are referred to as modified RAND and vol-RAND. The former uses the chemical potentials and molar-phase amounts as the iteration variables, while the latter uses chemical potentials and phase volumes to cosolve a pressure-explicit equation of state (EOS) with the equilibrium equations. Compared with the conventional second-order approach using Gibbs-energy minimization, these methods are more structured, with all components in all phases treated in the same way. Both have been derived to include chemical reactions for any number of phases along with the possible simplifications for only phase equilibria. The simple structured implementation of these methods is demonstrated for modified RAND and vol-RAND. The rate of convergence of the methods presented is shown to be the same as the conventional second-order method for isothermal flash. It is demonstrated that the use of an association term [cubic plus association (CPA)] adds little additional computational cost when using vol-RAND compared with a simple cubic Soave-Redlich-Kwong (SRK) without association. The RAND methods scale better in terms of the O(n3) operations as more phases are introduced, and are computationally less expensive than the conventional Gibbs minimization method for more than three phases.