SEPARATION OF DIISO-PROPYL ETHER+ISO-PROPANOL+N-PROPANOL BY EXTRACTIVE DISTILLATION AND PRESSURE-SWING DISTILLATION: SIMULATION AND ECONOMIC OPTIMIZATION

Wang Gui-ying, Liu Yan-jie, Chen Li

ABSTRACT:We have studied, simulated and evaluated economically two separation alternatives of a ternary mixture made up of 25 mol% diisopropyl ether, 60 mol% isopropyl alcohol and 15 mol% n-propyl alcohol by means of a practical case of a plant to treat 100 kmol/h. The simulation has been carried out satisfactorily by mean of a package of commercial software Aspen Plus using the thermodynamic model NRTL-RK. The extractive distillation using N,N-dimethyl acetamide as a solvent and pressure-swing distillation have been optimized independently and the best configurations have been evaluated economically. Results show that, for this particular case, the pressure-swing distillation is more attractive.

Keywords:DIPE, IPA, NPA, ED, SPD, simulation and economic optimization