The presentation will highlight the design and synthesis of heat-integrated distillation sequence. The novel and systematic methodology has been developed to achieve the cost-effective and environmental-benign design of distillation systems, where the sequence, types and configurations of distillation columns are fully and simultaneously optimised with heat integration options.

The proposed methodology is able to screen, evaluate and optimise all the opportunities within the heat-integrated distillation system: i) distillation sequence, column type (simple vs complex), ii) many degrees of freedom in distillation (e.g. column pressure, feed condition, reflux ratio), iii) many heat integration options (e.g. Inter-column heat integration between condenser and reboiler, steam generation from condensers, feed preheating, etc), and iv) design interactions (e.g. operating conditions affect column temperatures and heat duties, interactions between two successive columns, etc).

The design framework is formulated as a mathematical optimisation problem that is solved using a genetic algorithm. Case studies will be provided to illustrate the significant cost savings achieved from the proposed approach.