Modeling separation dynamics in a multi-tray bio-ethanol distillation column

The high energy consumption of popularly used distillation columns has motivated development of energytracking dynamic models with the ultimate objective for potential better energy and quality control of these separation facilities. A dynamic model being able to explicitly describe both the product quality and energy consumption in a typical bio-ethanol distillation column is proposed in this paper. The proposed model is derived based on mass and energy balance principles, with an empirical model of the evaporation dynamics of liquids on column trays. The model parameters are identified based on some available test data. General consistencies between the developed model and field data are clearly observed, even though some further tuning and improvement of this developed model is still needed.