Flash Distillation
Flash distillation (sometimes called "equilibrium distillation") is a single stage separation
technique. A liquid mixture feed is pumped through a heater to raise the temperature and
enthalpy of the mixture. It then flows through a valve and the pressure is reduced, causing
the liquid to partially vaporize.
Flash distillation is the process by which a portion of a mixture is vaporized and then the
vapor and liquid phases are separated.
Explaination:
Flash evaporation is one of the simplest separation processes. A liquid stream containing
several components is partially vaporised in a ”flash drum” at a certain pressure and
temperature. This results in two phases: a vapor phase, enriched in the more volatile
components, and a liquid phase, enriched in the less volatile components. The fluid is
pressurized and heated and is then passed through a throttling valve or nozzle into the flash
drum. Because of the large drop in pressure, part of the fluid vaporizes. The vapor is taken off
overhead, while the liquid drains to the bottom of the drum, where it is withdrawn. The system is
called ”flash” distillation because the vaporization is extremely rapid after the feed enters the
drum. Because of the intimate contact between liquid and vapor, the system in the flash
chamber is very close to an equilibrium stage. Figure 1 shows a schematic drawing of a flash
unit.
Binary Flash Distilation:
Assuming that we choose a basis of the feed flowrate, we have 5 unknowns (the outlet
flows: V, L; and the compositions: x, y, z).
We can clearly write two material balances:
F=V+L
zF = yV + xL
We can also use K values (or a similar VLE method, like Raoult's Law) in order to relate our outlet
compositions:
y = Kx
In addition to these three relations, we are often given the inlet composition, or the fraction of material
vaporized (V/F). Therefore, the relations can be closed (i.e., the degrees of freedom goes to zero), if we
are given more than one of these additional bits of information or if we have an adiabatic flash drum, so
that we can use an energy balance as our last relation:
zFH1F +(1−z)FH2F =yVH1V +(1−y)VH2V +xLH1L +(1−x)LH2L
Graphical Binary Flash Distillation
It is relatively common in separations (especially when we look at cascades of separation units) to
examine graphical approaches to solutions.
The graphical solutions to be used always include an operating line and an equilibrium curve
DEFINITION
) The equilibrium curve is a plot of the composition of a component in one phase versus the composition
of the same component in the other phase.
A simple way to obtain the equilibrium curve is by using the relative volatility, which you may recall is
defined as (for a binary system
AB=KBKA=yB xByA xA=(1−yA)xAyA(1−xA)
We can rearrange this to give:
y= ABx1+( AB−1)x
DEFINITION
The operating line is a line representing the material balance equations.
There are several options of operating line format, but one form can be obtained, by rearranging the
component mass balance for y:
y = -(L/V)x + (F/V)z
we then take the total material balance and we divide both sides by V to give:
(L/V) = (F-V)/V = (1-V/F)/(V/F)
combining these two equations gives:
y = [(V/F-1)/(V/F)]x + (F/V)z
If we denote the fraction of the feed that is vaporized (i.e., V/F) as f = V/F, we get the operating line as:
y=ff−1x+fz
Plotting these two lines yields the composition of both the exiting vapor (y) and liquid (x) as the
intersection of the lines.
NOTE:
The slope and intercept of the operating line are typically used to plot it in the first place. The dotted line
along the diagonal is the y=x line and is sometimes used to facilitate plotting the operating line (i.e., set
y=x in the feed line equation in order to find the location where the feed line crosses the dotted line). It
has no physical significance in this application.
Multi-Component Flash Distillation
If there are more than two components in the flash apparatus, a graphical procedure is no longer
possible.
In order to perform our multi-component analysis for N components, we can write N balance equations.
A total:
F=V+L
and N-1 component balances:
ziF = yiV + xiL
We also have N equilibrium equations (using K values):
yi = Kixi
In addition to the possibility of using an energy balance equation, we need to also use the physical
constraints:
iNyi=1
iNxi=1
An efficient way of solving these equations is to first combine the total mass balance with the
component equations to yield (N-1) equations of the form:
yi=ff−1xi+fzi
we then eliminate xi using the Ki value expressions to give:
yi=KiziKif−f+1
the same approach can be used to get a set of equations for x i:
xi=ziKif−f+1
It turns out that neither of these equations, when plugged into the physical laws, yields particularly
stable iterative solutions. Therefore, it is often the case that they are combined in such a way as to yield
a more numerically-friendly equation
DEFINITION
The Rachford-Rice Equation combines these two equations and has much nice convergence than either
individually:
iNKif−f+1zi(Ki−1)=0
NOTE:
This expression can be used to solve for the fraction vaporized, f. Similarly, we could have written our
material balances in terms of the fraction remaining liquid, typically denoted q.
Multi-Stage Column Distillation
Unfortunately, unless the relative volatility of the components to be separated is vastly different from 1,
a single flash operation is unlikely to achieve the required separation. (What would happen if the
relative volatility was equal to 1?).
One option of improving the degree of separation is to use a number of flash drums in series.
In this configuration, the liquid from the flash drums "below" the main feed are partially vaporized and
used as feed to yet "lower" drums, while the vapor streams "above" the main feed are partially
condensed to form the feed streams in "higher" drums. This leads to a single vapor stream concentrated
in the more volatile component at the "top" and a single concentrated stream of the less volatile at the
"bottom"; however, we also make several streams of intermediate concentration (that might not be
useful to anyone).
An alternative to this is to simply take those intermediate streams and vaporize/condense them as
needed to form a second feed stream to each of the drums, as shown.
This configuration is far superior since we now get a single stream that is concentrated in each of our
two components (for a binary mixture). the only small issue is that the total vapor flowrate decreases as
we move "up" the column, while the total liquid flowrate decreases as we move "down" the column. A
commonly used method of fixing this issue (and making design/analysis of these columns much simpler)
is to use reflux and boilup streams
DEFINITION
A reflux stream is a stream that essentially recycles a portion of the vapor product stream back to the
"highest" drum (stage).
DEFINITION
A boilup stream is a stream that essentially recycles a portion of the liquid product stream back to the
"lowest" drum (stage).
A final process improvement can be made by recognizing that the energy needed to vaporize one
stream can be obtained directly through the condensation of the other stream. Therefore, instead of
using partial condensers/vaporizers all along the column, we simply allow the intermediate streams to
physically intermix so that they can exchange energy efficiently. In this way, we change our energy
requirements in such a way that we simply need a single boiler at the bottom, and a single condenser at
the top. This final design is typically called a column distillation tower or simply a distillation tower:
NOTE:
Each of our "flash drums" is now called an equilibrium column stage, since they are no longer separate
process units (although we will do balances as if they were).
