Distillation of Binary Mixtures with Capillary Porous Plates

Abstract

ABSTRACT Distillation of liquid mixtures using capillary porous plates is a new process which depends upon the use of the intermolecular interactions between solids and liquids to alter the normal vapor-liquid equilibrium of a given mixture. Distillation of different binary mixtures, namely ethanol-water, ethanol-benzene, and acetone-ethanol systems, of different compositions was experimentally studied in a continuous distillation column equipped with four, five, or six porous sintered stainless steel fractionating plates of 13.5 μm pore diameter as well as six normal sieve plates. The results showed that the main factors affecting the separation efficiency in a given porous plate are the polarization of the pure liquids and the polarization difference between the mixture components. For the ethanol-water system, the results showed that while no separation was achieved in a distillation column with conventional stages, the azeotropic point of this system was broken in the distillation column with porous plates. A distillate of about 94 mol% ethanol was obtained for a feed of the azeotropic composition, i.e., 89.7 mol% ethanol. For the ethanol-benzene system, the azeotropic point was shifted from 40 mol% ethanol to about 30 mol% ethanol. For the acetone-ethanol system, there was no significant difference between the results obtained with normal stages and those with the porous plates. These results are in agreement with the developed theory.