Title: Comparing and Contrasting Isothermal and Adiabatic Flash

Author: By Antonio Torres Ayala

Introduction:

Both Isothermal and Adiabatic flash are a single-equilibrium-stage distillation in which a

feed is partially vaporized to give a vapor richer than the feed in the more volatile
components, but they have different properties and methods to resolve their respective
systems. Comparing and contrasting the two types of flash based on their operational
conditions, their mathematical models and their solution methods show how different and
similar the two are.

Development:

Both types of flash have the same number of variables and degrees of freedom, but they have
different known constants. In the case of isothermal flash, the temperature and pressure are
known, whereas in the adiabatic flash the pressure are known, and the heat transfer is equal
to zero. Either isothermal or adiabatic flash requires known values of flow and composition
in the feed. Both isothermal and adiabatic flash have the most volatile components in the
vapor phase and the least volatile components in the liquid phase. Neither isothermal nor
adiabatic flash can be solved without equilibrium constants calculated under operating
conditions.

The isothermal flash is simpler than adiabatic flash system. Both types of flash need the
Rachford-Rice equation to solve the system, but the adiabatic flash needs to determine the
temperature with an additional equation obtained by an energy balance. Both systems need
an iterative process to be solved, but the adiabatic flash needs an additional step with another
iterative method to find the temperature. Therefore, the isothermal solution method is faster
than the adiabatic flash, excluding the case when the bubble and dew points are needed to
find the temperature or pressure in an isothermal flash system. In that case, the resolution
time of the isothermal flash system is like that required in an adiabatic one.

Both isothermal and adiabatic flash systems can be solved for many components without
increasing the difficulty of the mathematical model. In both types of flash, adding
components to the system only increases the number of arithmetic sums. In both cases, the
Rachford-Rice equation can be solved graphically, and the variable psi relates the flow of
vapor phase and the flow of feed.

Conclusion:

Even though isothermal flash and adiabatic flash are different distillation processes with
distinct operational conditions, they have many similarities. They are based on the sane
mathematical model, and they can be solved with the same method regardless of the number
of components in the mixture. Although the adiabatic flash is more complex because it needs
an energy balance and therefore two iteration chains.
APA references:

Biegler, L. T., Grossmann, I. E., & Westerberg, A. W. (1997). Systematic Methods of

Chemical Process Design. Prentice Hall.

Holland, C. D. (1992). Fundamentals of Multicomponent Distillation (Third Edition).

McGraw-Hill.

King, C. J. (1980). Separation Processes (Second ed.). Mc Graw Hill.