Multiple Dividing‐Wall Columns – Current Status and Future Prospects

Abstract

Abstract Dividing‐wall columns are a well‐known and proven technology to separate a ternary mixture into pure products with significant savings in capital and operational costs compared to standard two‐column configurations. A consequent advancement are multiple dividing‐wall columns, which allow the separation of multicomponent mixtures in one column shell. However, due to their high complexity, no practical realization has been reported yet. This paper briefly discusses the current state of the art followed by a detailed description of a robust initialization of rigorous flow sheet simulations based on V min diagrams. With the data from the simulation a multi‐objective optimization can be performed. The knowledge from the simulations shall be used to build the first multiple dividing‐wall column worldwide.