Intermediate components tend to accumulate
near the middle of a
distillation column in many chemical and petroleum separations. Their
accumulation may lead to off-spec products, corrosion, plugging, or
periodic cycling. The most common method of removing these intermediate
components is by taking them out in one or more side draws. The addition
of such side draws may not go far enough to achieve the desired product
specs. If the side-draw approach fails, the expensive addition of
additional towers may be required. The question of whether a side
draw is sufficient to remove the accumulating intermediate components
or whether additional columns are needed depends on the relative volatilities
of the intermediate components at tower conditions. Often, there is
a high degree of uncertainty in the model used for correlation of
the phase equilibrium of these components. The Margules Uncertainty
Analysis method is valuable in analyzing these situations and in guiding
engineers to the rational solution. The case analyzed here is an acetonitrile
+ water separation tower with t-crotonaldehyde and propionitrile as
the intermediate components. There are uncertainties in the correlation
of the volatilities of these intermediate components in this system.
In light of these uncertainties, our analysis addresses the question
of whether the tight product specs can be achieved in one tower with
a side draw or whether more than one tower is needed. The analysis
shows that depending on the product specs and the tolerance for a
high reflux ratio, there would be situations where one can be certain
that one tower will work, while in other cases more than one tower
is needed to ensure achievement of the required product specs. The
analysis enables quantification of the risk of the single-column solutionspecifically
the quantification of confidence limits.