An exergy grand composite curve based procedure for arranging side exchangers on distillation columns

Abstract This paper presents an exergy grand composite curve based procedure for arranging a side-exchanger on a distillation column. The novel method is proposed to identify the original value of the location, heat duty of the side-exchanger and the criterion of modifying the column stage number. A benzene-toluene column is used to demonstrate the performance of the procedure. The results show that the location, heat duty of the side-exchanger, stage number modification on the column can be effectively identified, and the feeding stage optimization is also considered as the stage number modified. The procedure can guide the arrangement of a side-exchanger in a relatively simple, systemic and reliable way.