Gear's procedure for simulation of complex distillation

The objetive of this work is to investigate the dynamic characteristics of an extractive distillation column for dehydration of an aqueous ethanol mixture. A model was developed which consider the main phenomena taking place, such as the effects of simultaneous mass and heat transfers, the hydraulic behavior of the plates and the rigorous consideration of the phase equilibrium representation. The mathematical modeling results in a system of differential algebraic equations which is very stiff and thus must be solved by a convenient method. In this work, Gear's procedure is used.