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An ethylene glycol column is studied in this paper, where the main objective is to describe the
bifurcation diagram with respect to the reboiler boilup ratio. The bifurcation analysis reveals
the existence of a unique equilibrium point at low reboiler heat inputs and three equilibrium
points (two stable and one unstable) at high reboiler heat inputs. Moreover, the existence of
input multiplicities at moderate and high product purity is also revealed.
1. Introduction
The importance of multiplicity of solutions in separation processes stems from the fact that one set of design
parameters can yield several operating conditions. A
consequence of this situation is that control actions must
to be taken to regulate the operation of the process.
Multiplicity of solutions in separation processes has
been a largely studied problem. While some results state
the uniqueness of solution for binary distillation,1-3
other results come to the conclusion that multiple steady
state can arise in binary distillation if the flow rates
are given on a mass basis instead of a molar basis4 or if
multicomponent mixtures are separated in processes
with an increase of the number of stages.5
Regarding reactive distillation, several works have
reported the existence of multiple steady states.6-13
Both input and output multiplicities have been described for the cases methyl tert-butyl ether and ethyl
tert-butyl ether reactive distillations.9,10 Karpilovskiy et
al.13 derived a qualitative criterion for the existence of
multiple solutions (output multiplicity) in single-product
reactive distillation, given the main features of a distillation line diagram and reaction stoichiometry. The
nature of Karpilovskiy et al.s approach (see also Pisarenko et al.6) has a lot of similarities with that used to
analyze multiplicity of steady states in chemical reactors. The singularity theory approach has also been used
to look for the origin of the multiplicities in reactive
distillation.11,12 Gehrke and Marquardt11 used a onestage reactive distillation process for the identification
of possible sources of steady-state multiplicities related
to different chemical species. Guttinger and Morari12
reported an / analysis for the prediction of multiple
steady states in multicomponent azeotropic distillations.
Although both works substantiate the importance of
multiplicities in reactive distillation processes, they
conclude that more systematic research based on rigorous models is required to identify the physical reasons
for the phenomenon leading to multiple steady states.
Despite the large amount of reported results on
multiplicity in reactive distillation, only recently have
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
jjar@xanum.uam.mx. Fax: +52-5-7244900. Phone: +52-5-7244649.
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