A general process design methodology for membrane-assisted hybrid processes – Deterministic Mixed-Integer process optimization

Abstract:
Hybrid processes are characterized by the combination of unit operations with different physical separation principles and have the ability to overcome limitations of the single unit operations. The combination of a membrane process with a distillation process allows crossing of distillation boundaries, since membrane processes are not limited to vapour liquid-equilibrium. At the same time, unlike purely membrane based processes, the hybrid process also allows for sharp separations. To introduce a general process design methodology for membrane-assisted hybrid processes a recently reported process synthesis framework is extended with the required models for the membrane process. This paper presents a systematic procedure for the deterministic mixed-integer optimization of membrane-assisted hybrid separation processes.

Keywords:
hybrid processes, distillation, membrane separation, design methodology, MINLP, optimisation

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