Azeotropic distillation for 1-propanol dehydration with diisopropyl ether as entrainer: Equilibrium data and process simulation

Azeotropic distillation process is widely used to separate non-ideal binary mixtures into their constituent pure components. 1-Propanol dehydration was used as case study and diisopropyl ether was analysed as possible entrainer in an azeotropic distillation. The separation of some alcohols from their aqueous solution is a challenging task because these aqueous mixture forms minimum boiling azeotrope. In this way, isobaric vapor-liquid and vapour-liquid-liquid equilibrium data were measured for the 1-propanol + water + diisopropyl ether ternary mixture at 101.3 kPa. The data were correlated by NRTL and UNIQUAC models. A separation sequence (a decanter and a single-feed distillation column) for 1-propanol dehydration using diisopropyl ether was proposed. The simulation of the separation sequence was carried out satisfactorily by Aspen Hysys (R) using the thermodynamic model NRTL with the binary parameters obtained in this work. Moreover, the effect of temperature decantation was investigated in order to reduce the energy demand of the process.