Prediction of Homogeneous Azeotropes with Interval Analysis Techniques Exploiting Topological Considerations

ENRIQUE SALOMONE; JOSE ESPINOSA,

INDUSTRIAL & ENGINEERING CHEMICAL RESEARCH

American Chemical Society

Lugar: Washington, USA; Año: 2001 vol. 40 p. 1580 - 1588

0888-5885

In this paper, we present an efficient method for the prediction of homogeneous azeotropes.The method is an adaptation of a former method based on interval analysis techniques. Aninterval Newton with generalized bisection (IN/GB) technique is used to find all the roots of aset of equations representing the azeotropy condition. The novel contribution is to combine thisrobust technique with the Zharov-Serafimov topological index theory. By checking the topologicalconsistency, it is possible to avoid the numerical verification of the nonexistence and thereforeto reduce significantly the total computation time. In addition, a simplified model is selectivelyused at the first stage of the algorithm for providing good starting points for the second stage,where the full model is used for solution refining. In this way, more computation time is savedwithout compromising the reliability of the method. As a result, the performance of the methodis comparable to the one of the fastest local methods.