Complex distillation column configurations are estimated to harness energy savings up to 70%. Distillation synthesis with complex configuration is a meaningful target for energy improvements on an industry-wide scale. In this presentation, we demonstrate a hybrid algorithm combining stochastic search techniques with complex distillation configuration. An evolutionary algorithm will construct automatically structurally different complex separation network with the complex basic distillation configuration. Feasibility of the design will be delegated to an advanced feasibility tests based on temperature collocation of finite elements. Application will demonstrate the algorithms performance in complex column sequencing problems for real industrial application.

In this presentation, a generalized column section approach to draw distillation column configurations to separate an ideal to near ideal n-component mixture into n product streams or less will be presented. The stochastic evolutionary with novel temperature collocation method was incorporated to systematically find a set of optimum distillation schemes for a given application. The structure and length of configuration will not be predefined anymore and will be optimally sought by stochastic evolutionary. After we obtain an array of the optimal configurations and operating conditions, we will identify whether the current separation network is among of those results. The rigorous simulation and energy comparison will be implemented in commercial flowsheet software (HYSYS) with the help of the optimal results from the proposed methodology.

The major innovation of the proposed approach is an evolutionary program combined with a novel temperature collocation algorithm to systematically build and optimize complex column configurations based on column sections. The evolutionary algorithm constructs automatically different separation sequences; feasibility of the synthesized sequences is ascertained by means of the minimum bubble point distance. Finally, realistic solutions will be constructed and determined by the commercial flowsheet simulation (HYSYS) initialized by the proposed approach.