Performance Indicators in Reactive Distillation Design

Abstract

A cost indicator for the design and multi-objective optimization of reactive distillation columns, designated capacity, was introduced in previous work by the authors. The question of this indicator's effectiveness as a measure of the actual column cost is herein investigated over a number of designs by comparing it with the value obtained by means of conventional costing procedures. The results show that the level of accuracy obtained when using capacity is satisfactory and certainly acceptable for a preliminary design stage. However, in the present work a further refinement of this indicator is proposed, with the incorporation of an additional term, which accounts for the cost of catalyst. This will ensure a more stringent choice of candidate configurations at the early stages of design.