Study on separating benzene-cyclohexane by regular batch extractive distillation

A regular batch extractive distillation process for separating close boiling and azeotropic mixtures was studied experimentally.The effects of single solvent,mixed solvent and operating parameters,such as reflux ratio and solvent feed rate,on the separation process were investigated.The results show that binary mixed solvent(dimethylsulfoxide and N,N-dimethylformamide) is superior to single solvent(N,N-dimethylformamide or dimethylsulfoxide) for separating benzene-cyclohexane by regular batch extractive distillation.With the increase of the reflux ratio and flow rate of the solvents,the amount of products was increased in the process of regular batch extractive distillation.In addition,batch extractive distillation with mixed solvent is not more complicated, compared with batch extractive distillation with single solvent.