Exergy analysis of chromatographic separations in a fixed-bed column

In this work, we evaluate the use of exergy analysis on a single chromatographic column. A sensitivity analysis was done to unravel the relation between several parameters that might influence the quality of separation and the associated exergy loss. From the resulting analysis we concluded that the division of the exergy content in its components is important in revealing the nature of process irreversibilities. In addition, results show that the dilution problem is adequately described by the exergy change of mixing. All in all, results have shown that a minimum exergy loss occurs for a high production rate while keeping purity requirements constant. Consequently, exergy loss can be used as a tool for chromatographic separation optimization.