Abstract
A powerful new simulation procedure is developed for multicomponent distillation columns processing nonideal solutions or reactive solutions. Although the tridiagonal matrix algorithm is incorporated, the main calculational loop is the Newton-Raphson method in which liquid mole fractions are chosen for the independent variables and the functions to be zeroed are originally defined. The procedure does not vitiate at all such great advantages of the conventional tridiagonal matrix method as the ready incorporation of heat balances, nonideality of the solutions and chemical reactions, and still the algorithm and computer programming are rather simple. Nevertheless, the procedure presents much greater stability in finding converged solutions. A total of eight numerical experiments are made under a variety of conditions, and in all cases rigorous solutions are obtained achieving convergence in three to nine iterations.
