Figure 8 . Results for the bottoms liquid composition of the three MCD columns. The solid and dashed lines indicate values from the ideal stage model for nitrogen and argon, respectively, while points indicate the experimentally measured values for each respective column. The number of stages includes the condenser and reboiler, each of which represents one ideal stage.
These results are summarized in Table 1. Note that the HETP values referenced previously in this work apply to the separation of binary mixtures, where a single value is sufficient to describe the separation of the two components. Air, however, is a mixture of more than just two components, so the results are presented here in terms of separate HETP values for nitrogen and argon.
Table 1. Results for each MCD column. HETP values are relative to a column height of 25.4 cm, and are thus in units of cm.