Comparison of Pressure Swing Distillation and Extractive Distillation Methods in Separation of Maximum-Boiling Hemogenous Azeotropic Acetone-Chloroform Mixture

Distillation is the most common method of separation in the industry. However, it’s impossible to effectively separate azeotropic systems using simple distillation method.The purpose of this study is to separate a binary mixture of acetone and chloroform. Chloroform-Acetone mixture forms maximum boiling homogenous azeotrope at the pressure of ۱ atm. Thus, effective separation of this mixture can’t be achieved using simple distillation method. In this study, two distillation processes including extractive distillation (ED) using Dimethyl sulfoxide as entrainer and pressure swing distillation (PSD) were proposed.The processes were thoroughly simulated and their energy consumption was compared. Results illustrate that compared to the pressure swing distillation process, the extractive distillation process with Dimethyl sulfoxide as entrainer had a better performance. According to the results, the extractive distillation process reduced energy by ۹۵.۸۸% compared to the pressure swing distillation process which is mainly due to the significant reduction in reboiler and condenser heat load.

Keywords:

distillation , azeotrope , entrainerextractive distillationpressureswing distillation.