(215e) Synthesis & Design: Minimum Energy Demands In Distillation

I first met Professor Bill Luyben in 1974 when I attended a short course that he and Professor Bill Schiesser used to organize on distillation column control. This short course was usually very well attended and heavily populated by industrial practitioners. Speakers at the time included Page Buckley, Greg Shinskey, Cole Broslow, and others who were well known in the practice of distillation control.  To many, Bill Luyben’s area of expertise has always been viewed as process control.

However, Dr. Luyben has also been a very active researcher in distillation design and synthesis for many years and has developed a novel distillation synthesis and design strategy based on a unique combination of shortcut methods, heuristics and rigorous simulation. He has published numerous papers on the synthesis and design of conventional, heat integrated, reactive and divided wall columns and with energy costs rising rapidly with no ceiling in sight, Dr. Luyben’s approach represents a viable method for both retrofit and new design efforts directed at minimizing energy costs in distillation. Unfortunately Dr. Luyben’s distillation synthesis and design approach is not cited as often as it should be.

In this talk, I will compare and contrast Professor Luyben’s novel synthesis and design strategy to other approaches to distillation synthesis & design such as the boundary value design procedure (BVDP), the Minimum Bubble Point Distance Algorithm (MIDI), the Feed Pinch Method (FPM), the Feed Angle Method (FAM), and the Shortest Stripping Line Distance Approach (SSLDA). Several examples will be used to show that the novel design procedure of Professor Luyben is as good as any other methodology presently available for minimizing energy costs associated with distillation.