Investigation of multi-objective optimization for integrating design and control of ionic liquid-based extractive distillation

Abstract Extractive distillation is widely accepted and commercialized for separating azeotrope mixtures, but using traditional organic solvents leads to intrinsic obstacles such as the high energy requirement and solvent-related environmental problems. Benefiting from the development of green solvents, using ionic liquids instead of traditional solvents as entrainers for extractive distillation has attracted wide attention. This paper presents a multi-objective optimization strategy to integrate the design and control of the ionic liquid-based extractive distillation processes. In the optimization processes, the condition number (CN) and total annual cost (TAC) are minimized as the objective functions to evaluate the control properties and design of three different separation systems. The optimization results are shown by the Pareto front, which is based on trade-offs between controllability and economics. The environmental impact is evaluated by the environmental impact potential of energy for each system in a posterior stage during the optimization processes. Designs with minimum TAC (PT), trade-off designs between TAC and CN (PO) and designs with minimum CN (PC) on Pareto front are optimized and compared. The results show that the increase of reflux ratio can improve the control properties for the ionic liquid-based extractive distillation processes. Furthermore, the dynamic simulation of PT and PO are carried out to compare their dynamic responses based on the same dynamic control structure, and PO shows better performance in the aspects which include maximum deviation and residual error of dynamic response.