Saline extractive distillation process for ethanol purification
The aim of this work is to simulate and to optimize a saline extractive distillation process for purification of ethanol from the ethanol-water binary system. All the work was developed using ASPEN PLUS simulator, version 10.1-0, and the NRTL thermodynamic model developed for calculating activity coefficients of electrolytic systems, having as goal to get the anhydride ethanol (99.7 wt.%). In the development of this study, four saline agents were tested (NaCl, KCl, KI, CaCl(2)). The complete process and a methodology to optimize it were established in the simulator in such a way all variables were optimized. It was verified that using only the saline extractive distillation process, it is possible to purify the ethanol from the fermentation broth composition obtaining a product with high purity. Finally, a comparative study using electrolyte distillation process and the integrated distillation process (simple and extractive distillation) was carried out. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
distillation simulation optimization electrolyte systems azeotropic systems