Effect of Entrainer Loss on Plant-Wide Design and Control of an Isopropanol Dehydration Process

Abstract

Azeotropic distillation is an important technology for separating azeotropes or minimizing the energy expenditure of separating close boiling mixtures. In heterogeneous azeotropic distillation, an entrainer is usually added, which is recovered and reused in the subsequent stripping process. Depending on the design, there may be various degrees of entrainer loss. In this work, the plant-wide design and control of an isopropanol dehydration system using cyclohexane as an entrainer via heterogeneous azeotropic distillation is conducted. When there is negligible entrainer loss, a special case of input multiplicity is found, in which a set of design specifications can be achieved by an infinite but bounded set of operating conditions. The optimal condition with the minimum reboiler duty in this bounded set is achieved when the organic recycle flow is the smallest. Due to the existence of these multiple steady states, the entrainer inventory control is self-regulatory over long time operations if a PI control is used for the level of the organic phase in the decanter. If large offsets are allowed in the entrainer inventory control, the system may exhibit a long period of pseudosteady state followed by catastrophic failure. Alternatively, one can allow a small amount of entrainer loss to the bottom of the heterogeneous azeotropic distillation column, and provide a small amount of entrainer makeup. In this case, a control loop is added to guard against process drift due to loss of entrainer. However, because continuous maintenance of entrainer inventory is difficult, an on-off control scheme of entrainer makeup feed is used.