In the design of a reactive distillation column, aspects such as column configuration, catalyst loading, tray temperature, and side extraction rates should be well considered. Though preferences in Fischer–Tropsch (FT) synthesis may vary, it is acknowledged that the final product contains a wide range of hydrocarbons including fuel gas, gasoline, diesel, and linear wax. Zhang et al. (2018) previously developed an equation-oriented framework for optimal synthesis of integrated reactive distillation systems for FT processes.

Here, we extend the mass, equilibrium, summation, and heat equations to a mathematical program with complementarity constraints to deal with possible dry trays in the non-reactive sections. The purpose of describing disappearing phases is to avoid infeasibilities due to multiple bilinear terms in the model for complicated model structures. The model is implemented by solving initialization steps and a sequence of nonlinear programming problems to determine an optimal structure and operating conditions.

Design specifications for multiple products could be set as individual objectives to determine design limits. Moreover, a balance of multiple objectives could be reached by formulating the reactive distillation model as a multi-objective optimization problem. In this work, we employ the augmented ϵ-constraint method. The results show that significant design insights can be gained from the Pareto-optimal front regarding acceptable trade-offs among various objectives.

在反应蒸馏塔的设计中，应充分考虑诸如塔构型，催化剂负载，塔板温度和侧萃取速率等方面。尽管费托合成（FT）合成方法的偏好可能有所不同，但人们公认最终产品包含多种碳氢化合物，包括燃气，汽油，柴油和线性蜡。张等。（2018）之前开发了一个面向方程的框架，用于FT过程的集成反应蒸馏系统的最佳合成。

在这里，我们将质量，平​​衡，求和和热方程式扩展为具有互补性约束的数学程序，以处理非反应性区域中可能存在的干燥塔盘。描述消失阶段的目的是为了避免由于复杂模型结构中的模型中存在多个双线性项而导致不可行。该模型通过解决初始化步骤和一系列非线性规划问题来确定最佳结构和运行条件而实现。

可以将多个产品的设计规范设置为确定设计限制的单个目标。此外，通过将反应蒸馏模型表述为多目标优化问题，可以达到多个目标的平衡。在这项工作中，我们采用了增强的ϵ约束方法。结果表明，可以从帕累托最优方面获得关于各种目标之间可接受的折衷的重要设计见解。