Binary Distillation Column Design Using Mathematica Akemi G´alvez and Andr´ es Iglesias Department of Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences, University of Cantabria, Avda. de los Castros, s/n, E-39005, Santander, Spain {galveza,iglesias}@unican.es Abstract. The accurate design of distillation columns is a very impor- tant topic in chemical industry. In this paper, we describe a Mathemat- ica program for the design of distillation columns for binary mixtures. For simplicity, it is assumed that the columns are designed by following McCabe-Thiele’s procedure, a graphical method which determines both the number of stages required for the desired degree of separation and the location of the feed tray. Then, some other relevant column parameters (such as the height and diameter of the column, for example) are also determined. All results are obtained from an adequate combination of symbolic and numerical calculations taking advantage of the symbolic, numerical and graphical Mathematica programming tools. We remark that the same approach can be applied to any other kind of distillation columns by simply replacing our assumptions by those of each specific case. The performance of this program is shown through some illustrative examples. Finally, potential applications to both teaching and industry are also discussed. 1 Introduction Nowadays it is unanimously recognized that chemical industry plays a basic role in our current technological and industrial development. Very recently, it has been reported that chemical industry represents a 455-billion-dollar-a-year busi- ness and their markets are rapidly expanding worldwide everyday. Its spectrum of products includes cosmetics and beauty products, phamaceuticals, health care products, food aditives, liquors and many others. Perhaps, the most typical ex- ample that comes to our minds is the gasoline we pump for our cars almost daily. This gasoline is obtained from crude oil by distillation, undoubtely one of the most important processes in chemical industry [2]. From the manufacturing point of view, distillation is the most common sepa- ration technique. For example, it is the basic ingredient in the oil refining process to make gasoline, kerosene, diesel fuel, heating oil, chemicals of various grades for making plastics and other polymers, etc. This process is performed through distillation columns, which are designed to achieve this separation efficiently. However, they consume enormous amounts of energy, often contributing to more P.M.A. Sloot et al. (Eds.): ICCS 2003, LNCS 2657, pp. 848–857, 2003. c  Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003