Double azeotropy: calculations with Newton-like methods and continuous GRASP (C-GRASP) (Q425581)

Summary: Azeotropy is a thermodynamic phenomenon, where a boiling liquid produces a vapour with identical composition. This situation is a challenge for separation engineering since distillation processes explore the differences among relative volatilities, and, thus, an azeotrope can be a barrier for the separation. In binary mixtures, the azeotropy calculation problem is characterised by a \(2 \times 2\) non-linear system with pressure or temperature and a molar fraction as unknowns. An interesting and rare case is the so-called double azeotropy when this non-linear system has two solutions, corresponding to two distinct azeotropes. In this paper, we present some numerical aspects of double azeotropy using classical approaches (Newton's methods with globalisation techniques) and a new non-linear optimisation algorithm (the C-GRASP method).