The Study of Entrainer Flow in Azeotropic Distillation

Azeotropic distillation technique is an important way to separat close-boiling or azeotropic systems, in which the flow of entrainer is an important factor to affect separation property.The example of extracting pure isopropanol from isopropanol-water system with the entrainer cyclohexane was simulated to study the influence of entrainer on azeotropic distillation by the process simulation software ASPEN PLUS in this article.It was found that there exists a minimum entrainer flow in azeotropic distillation and the algorithm for determining the minimum entrainer flow was presented/In addition we studied the relationship between the minimum entrainer flow and plates and found that there is an appropriate number of plates in azeotropic distillation.The example of extracting pure isopropanol from isopropanol-water system with the entrainer benzene was simulated , and a similar result was found, too. However, benzene had a better effect than cyclohexane as a entrainer.