Document Type
Thesis
Date of Award
9-30-1983
Degree Name
Master of Science in Chemical Engineering - (M.S.)
Department
Chemical Engineering and Chemistry
First Advisor
John E. McCormick
Second Advisor
Ching-Rong Huang
Third Advisor
Edward Charles Roche, Jr.
Abstract
Lewis and Matheson, in the early 1930's, developed a manual calculation technique for the solution of multicomponent distillation problems. The object of this study was to see if there would be any advantage to using the Lewis-Matheson method, once incorporated onto a computer, over current multicomponent distillation solution techniques. The immediate advantage of using the L-M technique is that it requires fewer preliminary calculations than other computer methods. It was found that the L-M technique uses about half the execution time of a typical Newton-Raphson program, while using only one tenth the computer core (memory). This was not intended to be a direct comparison, however, since the Newton-Raphson program used is a far more rigorous program that takes into account the column energy balance, side streams, multiple feeds, and many condenser types. It was concluded that the accuracy of the L-M technique was not improved in the transformation to a computer program the problem area still being the ability to achieve a converged solution. Another problem area was found to be conversion difficulties when the feed key ratio is close to the distillate or bottoms key ratio.
Recommended Citation
Castner, William Raymond, "The Lewis-Matheson method on computer" (1983). Theses. 2065.
https://digitalcommons.njit.edu/theses/2065
