Anhydrous tert-butanol production via extractive distillation using glycerol as an entrainer: technical performances simulation

Abstract

tert-Butanol is widely used as a main solvent in the industries. The high purity of tert-butanol is required to fulfil the industrial standard for the solvent. Unfortunately, tert-butanol separation from water required a special distillation named extractive distillation due to the azeotropic point in the mixture. Thus, entrainer as a third component should be used to break the azeotropic point. Glycerol is one of the potential green entrainer used in the extractive distillation. The simulation of the extractive distillation using glycerol as entrainer for the separation of tert-butanol/water mixture was conducted in this study. The Aspen Plus Process Simulator V.10 was used to simulate the feasibility of the glycerol as an entrainer and determine the optimum operating condition of the extractive distillation and recovery column in the anhydrous tert-butanol production. The results show that the optimum configuration for the extractive distillation column design consists of the number of stages of 25, binary feed stage of 21, entrainer feed stage of 3, reflux ratio of 0.6, mixed feed temperature of 25°C, and an entrainer feed temperature of 45°C. The condenser and reboiler duties are -1171.04 kW and 1744.48 kW, respectively. Moreover, the tert-butanol purity with this configuration can be achieved up to 0.996 of mole fraction.