The long and the short of energy consumption in distillation

A discussion covers the unifying approach to energy consumption and energy efficiency proposed by Lucia et al. as it relates to distillation and to multi-unit chemical processes that involve distillation; basis of the methodology; methods for determining minimum energy requirements for distillation; and geometric illustrations elucidating key features of the new approach to energy consumption in the synthesis and design of chemical processes. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 2007 AIChE Annual Meeting (Salt Lake City, UT 11/4-9/2007)