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Lab & Test Facilities
ProsCon offers lab-scale distillation services to clients who wish to assess the feasibility of recovering valuable waste stream components. ProsCon uses the AspenPlus™ suite of engineering software to model distillation processes when performing conceptual design and front-end studies; however when critical physical property data is incomplete or unavailable from the Aspen™ property databanks, lab-scale distillation trials can be used to determine solution behaviour. Alternatively, the client may simply wish to have the lab trials reproduce the theoretical results generated with AspenPlus™.
In the event that physical property data for a given solution is unavailable, ProsCon will process the intended system feed stream in its lab-scale system under defined operating conditions and determine its Vapour-Liquid Equilibrium (VLE) or Vapour-Liquid-Liquid Equilibrium (VLLE) behaviour. This data is inputted to AspenPlus™, which can then model the behaviour of the solution over a wide range of operating conditions, i.e. theoretical stages, reflux ratios and feed and product stream compositions.
Lab-scale distillation trials can also be useful in uncovering operational issues that adversely affect distillation performance, such as foaming and fouling, and which may not have been considered during the preliminary design stage.
Our lab-scale system has been designed with flexibility in mind, allowing a wide range of waste streams to be processed using a number of different separation techniques. These include:
- Batch Distillation
- Continuous Distillation
- Vacuum Distillation
- Evaporation
- Homogenous and Heterogeneous Azeotropic Distillation
- Extractive Distillation
- Once-Through Pressure-Swing Distillation
Our system also has the capability of running in combination with other separation technologies — such as molecular sieves and membrane filtration systems — depending on waste stream properties/behaviour and the specific product requirements of the client.