Page 17 - Distillation theory

P1: FCH/FFX P2: FCH/FFX QC: FCH/FFX T1: FCH
CB644-FM CB644-Petlyuk-v1 June 15, 2004 4:28

Preface xv

guide in his or her search for economic engineering solutions, and the industrial
engineer will find ways of reducing the process cost. This book can serve as a
manual for students and postgraduates who want to refine their understanding of
distillation.
The book has many illustrations, without which understanding of the geometric
theory would be impossible. The visualization of trajectory location in the concen-
tration space has great practical significance, as it allows the process designer to
understand the main peculiarities of separation of each particular mixture. Devel-
oping the geometric theory of distillation necessitated the introduction of some
new terms. Furthermore, for some concepts, there are no unique, commonly ac-
cepted terms. For these reasons, the book is supplemented with a short glossary,
which is believed to be useful for the reader. For better understanding of the sub-
ject, each chapter has an introduction that presents the problems to be considered,
their brief history, and a conclusion, which summarizes the basic results. Besides
that, each chapter contains questions for review and exercises with DistillDesigner
software. A sample of this software is available at www.petlyuk.com. The most
important chapter for understanding the geometric theory of distillation is Chap-
ter 5. The chapters preceding it are basically introductory, and those that follow
speak mostly of the application of the theory.