Process Design Approach for Reactive Distillation Based on Economics, Exergy, and Responsiveness Optimization

The interactions between economic performance, thermodynamic efficiency, and responsiveness in reactive distillation process design are explored in this contribution. This motivation is derived from taking a sustainable life span perspective, where economics and avoidance of potential losses of resources (i.e., mass, energy, and exergy) in process operation over the process life span are taken into consideration. The approach to reactive distillation column design involves defining a generic lumped reactive distillation volume element and the development of rigorous dynamic models for the behavior of the element. As an extension of conventional existing models, this model, which is used as a standard building block, includes entropy and exergy computations. Three objective functions are formulated, which account for the process performance regarding economy, exergy loss, and responsiveness. A fundamental understanding of the strengths and shortcomings of this approach is developed by addressing various ca...