AN APPROACH TO THE OPTIMIZATION PROBLEM FOR MULTISTAGE COUNTERCURRENT PROCESSES

抄録

A necessary condition for the optimization of multistage counter-current processes is derived in a variant of the discrete maximum principle. This result can be used to optimize a process where the states in any number of stages have direct effects on one another. To illustrate this, a multistage countercurrent extraction process is analyzed; and under a certain performance index such a process is found to have an advantage over the corresponding crosscurrent process.