Preface

Distillation is probably one of the oldest systematic processes in the field of chemistry and chemical engineering which goes back to the first century AD. The initial concepts were applied in the production of distilled water. Distillation was a single step batch process at the beginning. However, fractional distillation as is used today was developed more than 10 centuries later.

Distillation has a wide application range in the industries from food to petroleum refinery nowadays. Distillation towers are still the symbol of chemical and petrochemical industry. During decades many improvements and optimizations have been made to this process along with the new technologies and findings, particularly before the 20th century. Although distillation is considered as a matured industrial process, there are yet many ways open for research in this field. Combining other technologies with distillation in the form of hybrid processes in order to merge the advantages of the both processes and avoid the inherent weaknesses of each process, e.g. distillation of azeotropic mixtures, is only one of the new improvements to the field.

Modeling of distillation process significantly helped its understanding and improvement with the minimum costs. This includes mathematical and theoretical basics as well as computer aided modeling and simulations. Therefore a main section of this book is dedicated to the mathematical modeling and simulation of distillation. The next section will discuss few experimental case studies mainly in the field of food processing and odor and aroma extraction. Several new concepts and applications of other novel technologies in distillation field are moved to the third section. The majority of the chapters in this section are on food applications as well.

The respected authors of the chapters are well-known professionals and it is my pleasure to acknowledge their kind contribution to this book. The collected chapters provide valuable knowledge on research and development of distillation technology. Both the fundamental concepts and practical experiences provided by the learned authors could certainly be a useful insight for the interested researchers in distillation field.

#### X Preface

As the editor, I would like to appreciate again the nice work of all the authors of different chapters as well as the open access publisher which did the best to provide a quality book.

February 2012

**Dr. Sina Zereshki**  Chemical Engineering Department, Kermanshah University of Technology, Kermanshah Iran

X Preface

quality book.

February 2012

As the editor, I would like to appreciate again the nice work of all the authors of different chapters as well as the open access publisher which did the best to provide a

**Dr. Sina Zereshki** 

Iran

Chemical Engineering Department,

Kermanshah University of Technology, Kermanshah

**Part 1** 

**Modeling and Simulation** 
