AN INTERACTIVE SIMULATION PACKAGE FOR THE DYNAMIC BEHAVIOUR OF BINARY DISTILLATION COLUMNS

This paper presents a simulation package for the dynamics of plate-type distillation columns. The model underneath basically consists of material balance equations. The relationship between the liquid and vapour compositions in the flows leaving any single plate is described in terms of the Murphree vapour efficiency and relative volatility. Dependence of the latter on operating pressure and composition is taken into account. A coordinate “closed loop” control of both the size of the time step and the value of the averaging parameter used in the implicit integration algorithm improves the performance and the numerical robustness of the code. The package, designed to run on a Digital VAX 11/750 under VMS operating system, is constituted by a set of FORTRAN programs coordinated by a unique command file.