“…As demonstrated by Brüggemann and Marquardt , the minimum energy demand of thermally coupled configurations can efficiently be evaluated by means of the RBM, based on the reformulations proposed by Carlberg and Westerberg , . Instead of introducing the thermal coupling by means of side streams, like in the DSTWUm approach of Wenzel and Röhm , thermal coupling is considered by transferring the heat from the heat exchangers of the prefractionator to the subsequent columns utilizing a modification of the RBM . Considering an infinite number of equilibrium trays, which is the basic assumption of any pinch‐based shortcut, this is thermodynamically equivalent to the thermal coupling.…”