Plant Design

[kali-sadface]

If I was to size a distillation column for reactive distillation, or even azeotropic distillation, where there are 3-4 components in the column as products that need to be separated, with at least 1 bottom and 3 distillate based on boiling points, what would be the best method for estimating the number of trays? Would it be Fenske-Underwood-Gilliland? Or is there a better way?

 

[pmoneysh]

For azeotropic mixture, relative volatility when approaches to 1, denominator on Fenske equation becomes 0 thereby giving an infinite number of trays.