Computers & Chemical Engineering, Vol.125, 114-133, 2019
Parallel column model for Dividing Wall Column simulations
Dividing Wall Columns (DWC) have attracted considerable attention in recent years. It is often stated that no commercial flowsheet simulation package has yet offered a DWC as a standard model. As a result, nearly all simulations of DWCs employ interlinked multi-column equilibrium stage models in a sequential-modular process simulator. It is claimed that equation-based simulators offer advantages over sequential modular simulators when modelling DWCs but, to date, no empirical evidence in support of such a contention has been published. In this paper we describe an equation-based parallel column model (PCM) designed to enable the straightforward simulation of an entire DWC as though it were a single column. With the aid of simulations of several different DWCs with one, two, or three walls, and with one or two condensers, we demonstrate that an equation-oriented PCM can have good numerical performance, arguably superior to sequential-modular multi-column models. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.