Distillation Lines for a Mixture of Chloroform, Acetone, and Methanol at 1 atm

Consider a ternary mixture composed of chloroform, acetone, and methanol at 1 atm. This Demonstration plots the (blue) distillation line that corresponds to the composition profiles in a staged column at infinite reflux. You can drag the locator to change the position of this curve. This curve is found by solving the following equation:

where is the liquid mole fraction of component at stage and is the vapor mole fraction of component at stage .

The azeotropes (labeled in the figure by for from 1 to 4) and pure components appear as the fixed points of . It turns out that it is equivalent to finding the fixed points of equation (1) and the singular points of

,

which gives the residue curves or the composition profile in a packed column at infinite reflux.