Approach to the 1-propanol dehydration using an extractive distillation process with ethylene glycol

Abstract

The extractive distillation process exploits the capacity of some chemicals to alter the relative volatility between the components of a mixture. In this way, a third component (called entrainer) may be added to an azeotropic binary mixture to break the azeotrope.This paper discusses the potential use of ethylene glycol as entrainer in a 1-propanol dehydration process by extractive distillation. First, the present work focuses on the acquisition of isobaric vapor–liquid equilibrium data of the ternary system 1-propanol+water+ethylene glycol system and the binaries systems 1-propanol+ethylene glycol and water+ethylene glycol. All measurements were done at 101.3kPa.The experimental data were correlated by the Wilson, NRTL and UNIQUAC local composition models in order to obtain a set of thermodynamic parameters. Finally, the extractive distillation process was simulated and later economically optimized with the aid of commercial software (Aspen Hysys®) using the previously obtained parameters of the NRTL model.