heat integration of extractive distillation process with glycerol entrainer for separation ofwater-ethanol azeotropic mixture

This paper evaluates separation of a minimumboiling homogeneous azeotropic mixture using theextractive distillation process. to alter the vaporliquid equilibrium of the water-ethanol azeotropicmixture, a glycerol entrainer with a boiling pointhigher than those of water and ethanol was used.feed-splitting was used for heat integration. in thismethod, the feed is split into two sections, wherethe bottom section is pre-heated through a hotstream, while the top section flows into the columnwithout a temperature change. this reduces the heatduty of the reboiler, with the heat duty of thecondenser remaining almost unchanged. toevaluate the proposed method, four differentprocesses were accurately simulated in aspenhysys v.10. the proposed process was found tohave 19% lower energy consumption thanextractive distillation without heat integration