DISTILLATION COLUMN

The rapid depletion of non-conventional energy sources enforced the study of different fuels such types are biofuels and bioethanol. Ethanol will be used as a pure fuel or blended with gasoline used for vehicles. Ethanols are often produced from various sources. When designing a separation system for mixtures containing close boiling point components, ordinary distillation is considered not feasible since high purity products require an oversized number of stages and reflux ratio. During the look phase of distillation processes, several problems may occur like the determination of an optimal number of plates, optimal location for feed, and optimal reflux ratio. the most objective of this paper is to work out the general material and energy balance for the 60,000 lit./day plant capacity of the distillation column and determine the economic aspects of the distillation column for the given net production capacity of ethanol. Then, similar feed information from the shortcut design was used for a replacement design which was developed per the smoker’s equation can calculate the method conditions of the distillation column.