Enhanced separation of highly non-ideal mixtures with extractive heterogeneous-azeotropic distillation

Abstract

The distillation based separation can be extremely complex if highly non-ideal mixtures are to be separated. In spite of different successfully applied unit operations there is still a possible way to improve the distillation technique and widen its toolbar. A new improvement in this area is the development of the extractive heterogeneous-azeotropic distillation (EHAD). This unit operation includes the merits of extractive- and heterogeneous-azeotropic distillations in one unit without extra material addition. Our work supports EHAD features with successful experiments compared with modelling and comparison with other separation structures proving that the application of EHAD makes the separation of extremely non-ideal mixtures possible on an easy, powerful, energy saving, and cost efficient way.