Integrated Synthesis and Differential Evolution Methodology for Design and Optimization of Distillation Processes

When distillation is chosen as the separation method for multicomponent mixtures, the design and optimization of all possible alternatives could be too time consuming or simply not possible. The systematic synthesis methodology, proposed in this chapter, allows the definition of a search space of alternatives where the simple column sequences are directly related to all the alternatives. When this correspondence is extended to the distillation column design, it is possible to define the so called “Sequential Design Method”, able to speed up the optimization step. The combination of the sequential design method, together with the multiobjective differential evolution algorithm, results in a successful methodology to obtain the optimal design in a reasonable time avoiding the evaluation of all the alternatives included in the search space.