Achieving a better understanding of binary azeotropic mixtures distillation through Aspen Plus process simulations

Abstract

Mass transfer operations are at the heart of every chemical engineering curriculum, as they are the basis of separation procedures extensively used in the chemical industry. Distillation, which involves mass transfer between vapor and liquid phases, is, by far, the most extended separation practice. However, the presence of azeotropes in most of the mixtures with industrial interest complicates the process analysis due to tedious and complex calculations, even in the simplest case of binary mixtures. Moreover, the need for recycle streams makes convergence and variables specification very difficult as compared with the separation of nonazeotropic mixtures. Initial training in process simulators results fundamentally in high‐quality chemical engineering teaching programs. It yields a better understanding of enhanced distillation and entails the use of professional tools highly demanded by employers. This paper reports how the use of the commercial simulator Aspen Plus can help students explore azeotropic distillation by their own, and thus enables looking into aspects which are beyond the scope of problems solved by hand.

Using Mathcad to facilitate the design of chemical reactors involving multiple reactions

“…It consisted of 10 questions, which were answered by all the students (22 in total), the first three of which referred to the training courses on initiation to Mathcad; the questions and their corresponding scores and standard deviations are displayed in Figure . The main conclusions derived from the students’ survey are: As mentioned before, one of the faults detected in the previous educational experience with Mathcad was the little time devoted to the training courses. In the current experience, it was increased in one more session which resulted in an acceptable score in the question Q1 (3.8).…”

“…As mentioned before, one of the faults detected in the previous educational experience with Mathcad was the little time devoted to the training courses. In the current experience, it was increased in one more session which resulted in an acceptable score in the question Q1 (3.8).…”

“…One of the main shortfalls found in the previous experience using Mathcad was the short duration of training courses. In the current experience, the training courses have been expanded to three 5‐hr seminars dealing with the basis notions necessary to use Mathcad.…”

“…Thus, the main objective of this paper lies not only in the fact of using Mathcad to design these reactors but also in proposing this together with a teaching methodology that favors students’ problem‐solving skills. Considering our previous educational experience using Mathcad for the calculation of pumping power , the teaching methodology followed here was similar to that, which consisted of two steps: (a) Training courses on initiation to Mathcad to learn the basic about Mathcad, and (b) the optimization of chemical reactors design involving multiple reactions. In addition to that, students answered specific questions to know their satisfaction degree with the usage of Mathcad for solving chemical reaction engineering problems.…”

Effective integration of computational tools into Chemical Engineering studies at an international level

“…; b) availability and expertise of the teaching staff participating in this project. The use of individual software packages in Chemical Engineering teaching has been reported (Binous, 2008;Parulekar, 2006;Roman and García-Morales, 2019;Wankat, 2006). However, to the best of our knowledge, there is still a lack of studies which compare their adequacy for specific matters.…”