Feasibility of separations for distillation of nonideal ternary mixtures

The product compositions in single‐feed distillation columns can be specified only in certain regions of the composition space, which depend only on the pressure, feed, and vapor‐liquid equilibrium for the mixture. In nonideal mixtures, even without azeotropes, the regions may allow unusual product distributions. For example, the distillate in a “direct split” is composed primarily of the lightest component. Intuition and experience with relatively ideal mixtures suggest that the next most plentiful component is the intermediate boiler. In nonideal mixtures, however, with or without azeotropes, the next most plentiful component may be the highestboiling species with only trace amounts of the intermediate boiler. For azeotropic mixtures, distillation boundaries may give rise to additional restrictions on the product compositions. We describe how simple distillation boundaries deform into continuous distillation boundaries and, in a limited number of cases, how the simple distillation boundaries can be crossed in continuous columns for certain ranges of the design variables. Unfortunately, such designs may be quite sensitive to model uncertainties or to disturbances in the parameters.