CCB 3024 Process Plant Design

Assignment 1
Marks: 20
4 students per group
1.

A distillation column operating at 14 bar with a saturated liquid feed of 1000 kmol/h
with composition given in Table 1 is to be separated into an overhead product that
recovers 99% of the n-butane overhead and 95% of the i-pentane in the bottoms.
Relative volatilities are also given in Table 1.
Table 1 Distillation column feed and relative volatilities.
Component
Propane
i-Butane
n-Butane(LK)
i-Pentane(HK)
n-Pentane
n-Hexane
n-Heptane
n-octane

fi (kmol/h)
30.3
90.7
151.2
120.9
211.7
119.3
156.3
119.6

i,j
16.5
10.5
9.04
5.74
5.10
2.92
1.70
1.00

a) Calculate the minimum number of stages using the Fenske equation

b) Estimate the compositions of the overhead and bottom products using the Fenske
equation
c) Calculate the minimum reflux ratio using the underwood equation
d) Assuming that the distillation column uses a total condenser, estimate the number
of theoretical stages required if R/Rmin =1.1
[10 marks]

2.

The stream data extracted from the process flow sheet is given in Table 2. Design a heat
exchanger network for the problem using a systematic design approach.

Table 2 Thermal and flow data

Stream

Supply

Target

temperature temperature
No. Type

TS (oC)

TT (oC)

Heat capacity
flowrate
mCp
(kW/oC)

Hot

300

150

Hot

150

50

Hot

200

50

Cold

190

290

Cold

90

190

Cold

40

190

[10 marks]

Submission date: June 26, 2014