Stability and transient behavior of homogeneous azeotropic distillation
In this article, the steady state and dynamic behavior of an azeotropic distillation column separating the homogeneous ternary mixture acetone-benzene-heptane is studied. Nonlinear phenomena reported in earlier studies like multiple steady states (Bekiaris et al., 1993) and limit cycles (Lee et al., 1999) are shown for this mixture. In addition, a new phenomenon is reported: the occurrence of homoclinic bifurcations resulting in cases of only one attractor in the presence of three steady states. It is discussed how these phenomena are influenced by operating parameters such as distillate and reflux flow rate, feed composition, etc.. The steady state and dynamic behavior is classified in the parameter space.
azeotropic distillation multiple steady states homoclinic bifurcation instability oscillation hopf bifurcation