Distillation technology is applied in most process industries and is energy intensive and has a significant effect on the overall cost of production. Batch distillation, in particular, is one of the most important unit operations for small-scale production of specialty and fine chemicals. This paper investigates using the Attainable Region approach to minimize energy consumption of a simple conventional binary batch distillation process. The fundamental processes considered are boiling and mixing. It is shown that the trajectory of a simple batch distillation process in convex in the concentration-energy space and that there is therefore no room for minimizing energy consumption by any simple mixing policy.
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