Thermal Coupling in Non-ideal Multicomponent Distillation

This study deals with minimizing energy requirement in multicomponent non-ideal distillation processes using thermal coupling technique.Two ternary (Methanol-Ethanol-Water and Acetonemethanol-Water)
with different feed composition of [(0.333,0.333,0.333), (0.8,0.1,0.1), (0.1,0.8,0.1), (0.1,0.1,0.8)] ,and one quaternary feed systems (n-Hexane MCP Ethanol and Benzene) with different feed composition of
[(0.25,0.25,0.25,0.25), (0.7,0.1,0.1,0.1), (0.1,0.7,0.1,0.1),(0.1,0.1,0.7,0.1) , (0.1,0.1,0.1,0.7)] were considered.The feed systems were assumed as  liquids at their boiling point,  three fractional recoveries of 0.9, 0.925 and 0.95. The operating pressure was assumed to be constant at 1 atm. Nine different configurations were used to separate the feed systems according to their non-ideality.The results are compared with the best three configurations of conventional systems and the percentage saving in total reboiler load and total annual cost have been calculated with respect to these three configurations.The results obtained were compared with previous works using other techniques such as heat pump and heat matching.A computer programme for multicomponent nonideal distillation using thermal coupling technique was
developed using Mat lab