Abstract
The study is motivated by the industrial problem from pharmaceutical industry, which is ethanol and methanol removal from process wastewater. To complete this goal hybrid method is investigated and optimized. Two distillation columns are sufficient for separation of alcohol-water mixture. Suitable water can be purified as bottom product of first column. Ethanol and methanol purification is achieved with combination of second distillation column and pervaporation. The target of this research is to rigorously model and optimize the separation of water-ethanol-methanol ternary mixture in professional flowsheet simulator environment. The minimal sufficient membrane transfers area and number of minimal theoretical stages of the columns are determined. Cost estimation is also investigated according to Douglas methodology. Considering the simulation and economic results it can be determined that, the hybrid configuration is suitable for separation of ternary mixture in 99.5 weight percent purity.
Highlights
Separation of water and alcohol mixtures can be considered well-known example of hydrophilic pervaporation operation in chemical and related industries [1, 2]
Two distillation columns are sufficient for separation of alcohol-water mixture
Ethanol and methanol can be considered as Volatile Organic Compound (VOC)
Summary
Separation of water and alcohol mixtures can be considered well-known example of hydrophilic pervaporation operation in chemical and related industries [1, 2]. More references reported that Pervaporation (PV) method is applied for separating ethanol (EtOH) / water and methanol (MeOH) / water binary mixtures, but there is nearly no study and widespread technology for separating water-ethanol-methanol ternary mixture. The target of this study is to optimize the separation of water-ethanol-methanol ternary mixture with combination of distillation and hydrophilic pervaporation method in professional flowsheet environment. Hybrid method of distillation and hydrophilic pervaporation has proven to be economically viable for separation of binary azeotropic mixtures [11]. Hydrophilic PV proved to effective solution for separation of ethanol / water binary mixture in contrast to distillation [7]
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