You are tasked with designing a phase separation system that can flash a feed consisting of 10 mol%

acetone (1), 40 mol% ethanol (2), and balanced water (3) to obtain a liquid that is composed of 1 mol%
acetone, 20 mol% ethanol, and balanced water. Design the temperature and pressure of this flash
operation and also find the composition of the resulting vapour phase and vapour fraction.

Calculation strategy

While the vapour phase may be assumed to be an ideal-gas solution, the liquid phase of this system is
well represented by the NRTL activity coefficient model:

n
  n

x j ji G ji n  x j Gij   xm mj Gmj  

+  n
j =1
ln  i =  ij − n
m =1

j =1  
n

x G k ki   xk Gkj


 xk Gkj  
 
k =1  k =1 k =1

bij
 ij = aij +
T/K

Gij = exp ( −cij ij )

where aij, bij, and cij are component-specific binary parameters.

It can be seen that the activity coefficients are complex functions of temperature, x1, x2, and x3. To aid
you in your calculation, a spreadsheet with these formulae in place is provided. You may play around
to observe how the activity coefficients react to composition and temperature.

As the desired composition of the liquid phase after flash is already provided, the only trial-and-error
you need to perform is to find the temperature and the vapour fraction that satisfy this equation:

zi
xi =
1 + ( K i − 1) V / F

which can be written twice for any two xi. The left-hand side of this equation is the xi specified in the
design problem, while the quantity on the right-hand side will equal the left-hand side only if the
temperature and the vapour fraction have the correct values.

Once the temperature and the vapour fraction are determined, the composition of the resulting vapour
phase and the pressure can be calculated directly from modified Raoult’s law.