OPTIMAL SEPARATION SEQUENCE
FOR THREE-COMPONENT SYSTEMS

Anatoly M. Tsirlin¹, Vladimir Kazakov² and T.S. Romanova¹

¹Program Systems Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences
  Pereslavl-Zalesskij, Russia
²School of Finance and Economics, University of Technology
  Sydney, Australia

Received:11 October, 2006. Accepted: 15 January, 2007.

SUMMARY

In this paper the problem of finding the optimal separation sequence for a three-component mixture in a two-stage separation system is considered. Two solutions are obtained. The first minimizes the energy used, subject to a given flow rate of the input mixture, by selecting optimal separation sequence and by distributing the contact surfaces between the first and second stages optimally. It is also shown that the input flow rate of a heat-driven two-stage separation system is bounded and that this bound (the maximal possible rate of heat-driven separation) depends on the separation sequence used. The closed-form expression for this dependence is obtained.

KEY WORDS

separation, three-component systems, zeotropic mixture

CLASSIFICATION

PACS:

05.70.Ln, 28.60.+s

---

Full paper as pdf version.