Abstract
Advanced processes, which are alternatives to ordinary distillation, are essential to dehydrate azeotropic alcoholic mixtures for biofuel production. In that regard, this work focuses on the analysis of heterogeneous azeotropic distillation for the separation of a 2-propanol + water mixture in order to recover the alcohol with a sufficiently low water content. By comparing the performances of various entrainers on the basis of ternary maps, isooctane was selected for further process analysis. An advantage it poses is related to the fact that traces of it within the recovered dehydrated alcohol are highly welcome with a view to its subsequent use as a fuel. Aspen Plus® V11 software was employed for the simulation of the process, thus filling the gap existing in the literature due to the lack of studies on the process analysis of the heterogeneous azeotropic distillation of the 2-propanol + water system using isooctane as an entrainer.
Highlights
The need for reducing the consumption of fossil fuels and increasing the use of renewable energy has caused a growing interest in biofuels
+ water + isooctane mixtures have been analyzed, and the extracting capability of the entrainer was estimated by making reference to distribution coefficients and separation factors [41,42,51,55]
As was previously mentioned, traces of such an entrainer, which is a typical hydrocarbon in gasoline, are useful within the recovered 2-propanol fraction with a view to its subsequent use as a fuel
Summary
The need for reducing the consumption of fossil fuels and increasing the use of renewable energy has caused a growing interest in biofuels. Ethanol and butanol can be mentioned, which have been proven to reduce life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions when produced from biomass and waste feedstock [2], though some problems are encountered when operating these processes [3,4], and high costs are involved in the downstream product recovery [5,6]. According to Zhu et al [7], bioethanol recovery from fermentation broths involves energy consumptions that account for 60–80% of the total biofuel production consumption. An important aspect to be taken into account is related to the concentration and final dehydration of the fermentation broth, which affect the price of the alcohol product, especially if a high purity is required, as for direct combustion or gasoline mixing purposes [8]. The dehydration of azeotropic alcoholic mixtures represents a crucial step for biofuel production, and alternative processes to ordinary distillation need to be found
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