Abstract: Despite its obvious advantage of energy conservation, thermally coupled distillation has not been widely used in industry since 1960s. The reason for its limited application and its future prospect are investigated by simulation study of the operational performances. For systems to be separated with different degrees of "Separation Difficulty Ns", the operational performances of thermally coupled distillation towers are quite different. Only the operational performances of those thermally coupled distillation towers with a lower degree of separation difficulty are acceptable for industrial use. The multiple solutions for Petlyuk columns are also discussed. The confi-gurations and operational performances of possible solutions are quite different Only the one with optimal performance should be chosen as the design basis.

摘要： 热偶精馏虽然具有明显的节能优越性,但长期以来并未在工业中普遍推广应用.本文试图从其操作性能角度研究其难以推广的原因及工业应用前景.本文闸明:在不同的系统中,热偶精馏塔的操作特性有很大差别;只有难分离程度低N_(?)的系统,其操作特性可以满足工业应用的要求.本文还对热偶精馏的多解现象进行了探讨,并指出:不同的解虽然均可满足设计规定的要求,但由于在塔的外形尺寸及操作特性上均不相同,故设计应找到操作特性最佳解为设计基础.