Design and control of extractive dividing wall column and pressure-swing distillation for separating azeotropic mixture of acetonitrile/N-propanol

This paper addresses the design and the control analysis of the extractive dividing wall column and the pressure-swing distillation for separating acetonitrile (MeCN)/n-propanol system using Aspen Plus and Aspen Dynamics. The steady state design of the two processes was optimized by minimizing the total annual cost (TAC) via a sequential iterative optimization procedure. On the basis of the steady-state results, the dynamic control of the two processes and the comparison between them were presented. The results show that the pressure-swing distillation has the advantages for the economic savings and the control stability compared with the extractive dividing wall column process. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.