Increasing competition in the process industries enforces the application of mathematical simulation techniques both in the design phase and in the operating phase of a plant. The basic apparatus for separation processes is the distillation column. Its rigorous (tray by tray) mathematical modelling results in a system of simultaneous nonlinear equations (algebraic in the steady-state case, diff...

Two different alternatives for etherification of glycerol (G) with tert-butyl alcohol (TBA) are developed and analyzed. The conventional reaction separation recycle system uses a plug-flow reactor to perform the reaction in liquid phase, in the presence of a heterogeneous catalyst (Amberlyst 15). The separation of the products from reactants is achieved by two distillation columns where pure gl...

Information retrieval systems can attempt to answer the user’s query directly, by extracting an appropriate passage of text from a corpus and presenting it on the results page. However, sometimes the passage of text contains extraneous information, or multiple passages are needed to form an answer. In cases like these, some sort of answer distillation system could be useful, taking as input the...

Existing refinery distillation systems are highly energy-intensive, and have complex column configurations that interact strongly with the associated heat exchanger network. An optimisation approach is developed for existing refinery distillation processes. The optimisation framework includes shortcut models developed for the simulation of the existing distillation column, and a retrofit shortc...

In industry, many separation processes involve the separation of multicomponent mixtures using distillation. There are many distillation configurations that can carry out the same overall separation process. These configurations use an equal number of distillation columns, but they differ significantly in energy consumption. Therefore a major challenge for a practitioner is the identification o...

The structure of thermally coupled distillation systems offers several control challenges arising from the transfer of vapor (or liquid) streams between columns. In particular, the presence of recycle streams for coupled schemes has led to the notion that control problems might be expected during the operation of these systems, in contrast to the rather well-known behavior of conventional disti...

Background Hydro-distillation (HD) method is a traditional technique which is used in most industrial companies. Microwave-assisted Hydro-distillation (MAHD) is an advanced HD technique utilizing a microwave oven in the extraction process. Methods In this research, MAHD of essential oils from the aerial parts (leaves) of rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis L.) was studied and the results were co...