Insights on the sustainable design of extractive distillation processes for separating the isopropanol/1,4-dioxane/water mixture considering economic and entropy generation indicators

Abstract

Several extractive distillation processes with DMSO as extractant are proposed to separate isopropanol/1,4-dioxane/water azeotropic mixtures in this study, including direct extractive distillation (DED), indirect extractive distillation (IED), DED process with dividing wall column (DED-DWC), IED process with dividing wall column (IED-DWC) and IED process with heat integration (IED-HI). The multi-objective genetic algorithm employs total annual cost (TAC) and entropy generation as the objective functions to optimize processes. The TOPSIS entropy weight method has invested to identify the appropriate optimal solution. DWC and heat integration technologies are proposed to decrease the irreversibility of DED and IED processes. The results showed that the best option to perform the separation of the mixture was the IED-HI process. It is gratifying to note that the TAC and entropy generation of IED-HI process is decreased by 15.36 % and 28.84 %, respectively, in relation to the IED process.