Hey everyone, i'm a first year oil engineering student, fortunately i'm taking distillation with the lovely chemical engineering students. anyways, as we oil engineers the rivals to chemical engineering students my classmates refused to help me ( joke we are all lost actually ). if anyone please can help me with distillation i have few questions in multicomponent distillation

1-if we want to build a distillation tower to separate different components, what is the perfect number of trays we should use? i have the data for the reboiler/condenser duties and i have also the reflux ratio for different option of trays, what should be the main factor that i base my option of trays on?, the lowest duties or lowest reflux ratio?

2-what is the relationship between the number of trays and a)reflux ratio, b)column diameter,c)condenser duty, d)reboiler duty, e)the pressure of the bottom products because i have same pressure for top product in different number of trays but different pressures for bottom product in different number of trays.

3-this is the last part i'm sorry for taking alot of your time my friends, what is the net present value, is it going to affect my choice of trays?



thank you so much i would appriciate your help so soo so much.....


Rafael S
oil engineering student
university of manchester