Conceptual Design of Flowsheet Options Based on Thermodynamic Insights for (Reaction-)Separation Processes Applying Process Intensification

This paper presents a systematic conceptual process design approach for the generation of flowsheet options with special focus on process intensification as it considers some integrated reaction separation and hybrid separation techniques. For the identification of necessary separation steps and possible techniques, an automated tool was developed and implemented in Matlab. The objective of this tool is to find solutions to the design task with respect to predefined boundaries of the final process. In this context, thermodynamic insights that correlate physicochemical and thermodynamic properties of the chemical system with promising techniques are used. The approach is easy to extend by additional techniques, can be embedded into common process design frameworks, and is able to generate a meaningful variety of promising flowsheet options for a given design task. To underline its capabilities, the tool was applied to two design tasks, one of which is the separation of a nonideal fermentation supernatant, while the other represents the production of ethyl lactate. For both, promising flowsheet options were generated and discussed.