Batch distillation targets for minimum energy consumption

Distillation technology, which is applied in most chemical and process industries in general, is an energy-intensive process, and this has a significant effect on the overall cost of production. Batch distillation, in particular, is one of the most important unit operations for small-scale production of specialty and fine chemicals. This unit operation is a strong unifying factor and the main support of pharmaceutical and perfume industries. This paper investigates a novel approach of minimizing energy consumption of a simple conventional binary batch distillation process by applying the attainable region theory for a binary batch boiling process. The fundamental processes considered are boiling and mixing. It is shown that the trajectory of a simple batch distillation process is convex in the concentration-energy space and that there is no room for minimizing energy consumption by any simple mixing policy.