Shortcut Method for the Design of Reactive Dividing Wall Column

The minimum vapor flow method and V min diagram are applied to the design of a reactive dividing wall column (RDWC) in this work. A shortcut design method for the conventional dividing wall columns based on the Underwood equations has been extended by introducing a new parameter that eliminates the effects of the reaction to allow conceptual design of the RDWC. Taking the syntheses of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), ethyl tert-butyl ether (ETBE), and dimethyl ether (DME) as design cases, the results show that the minimum vapor flow method and the V min diagram can be well applied to the conceptual design of a RDWC in different reaction systems.