Einfluß von thermophysikalischen Stoffdaten auf die Auslegung und den Betrieb von Destillationskolonnen

Influence of thermophysical data on the design and operation of distillation columns. It has become common practice in the petrochemical industry to utilize highly developed process simulators for the design of individual pieces of equipment or entire processes. Apart from actual model development, attention focusses on the calculation and use of efficient solution and converging algorithms in the development of such process simulators. Although frequent reference is made to the importance of the underlying material data in the literature and in practical applications there exist only scattered studies giving a suitable choice of the available substance data models and the sensitivity of the process variables to inaccuracy and uncertainty of the material data and the material data models. The present article illustrates the influence of material data (choice of model, sensitivity) for the example of the design and operation of distillation columns and several methods and recommendations are given for fast estimations. With the aid of appropriate examples, the influence of uncertainties in the underlying measured data and the phase equilibrium models on various process variables (plate number, reflux ratio, distillate and sump concentrations) is demonstrated.