Computer Aided Design of Distillation Column Suitable for Classroom Teaching

This article presents an integrated approach for design of distillation column which is suitable for classroom teaching. The instructor of a course may seldom need to generate multiple sets of design problems for class assignments. With the present approach he/she has to provide only the input data for individual problems in an MS-Excel® spreadsheet. The methodology integrates the Mail-Merge feature of MSWord® and MS-Excel,® coupled with user-defined function in Microsoft® Visual C++ to generate multiple sets of solution for design of the distillation column. The MATLAB® language for technical computing generates graphical outputs of those design problems. The philosophy of this approach may be extended to other design problems too.