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In the separation industry the extractive heterogeneous-azeotropic distillation (EHAD) is a new and powerful innovation, that is capable of making the separation of highly non-ideal mixtures feasible and economical. In the last years there has been much attention paid to the separation of the minimum boiling homogeneous azeotropes. Although maximum boiling azeotropes are fewer in numbers than the minimum boiling ones but their separation is more complicated but it could be solved with the EHAD, too. Since EHAD is not limited to the separation of minimum boiling azeotropes, the separation of the maximum boiling azeotropes is studied in this work. Our work is motivated by industrial problems because there are such maximum boiling azeotropes in the liquid wastes of the fine chemical industry. The separation of highly non-ideal Water–Acetone–Chloroform–Methanol and Water–Ethyl Acetate–Chloroform–Ethanol quaternary mixtures are investigated and optimized in professional flowsheet simulator environment. Total Annual Costs are also determined. The purity requirement is 99.5 m/m% for Chloroform and the bottom product should be as clear as possible in water so that less liquid organic waste has to be incinerated. It is also an important merit of the EHAD that the chemicals in the distillate can be usually reused supporting sustainability. Different solutions for the separations supplemented with heat integration are examined. On the basis of the computer simulations and the experimental verification it can be concluded, the first time on the literature, that the separation efficiency of EHAD is superior also for the separation of the maximum boiling azeotrope mixtures.

The work is motivated by an industrial problem, which is alcohol removal from pharmaceutical process wastewater. The aim of the study was to develop a complete hybrid operation is investigated. Ethanol dehydration, in combination with distillation and hydrophilic pervaporation, is used to investigate about the extent of separation of the ethanol-water mixture. The aim of this research is to rigorously model and optimize this hybrid operation in professional flowsheet simulator environment. The number of minimal theoretical plates of distillation column and minimal effective membrane transfer area are determined. Cost estimation is also examined according to Douglas methodology. Considering our results it can be concluded that, the distillation and hydrophilic pervaporation processes are suitable for separation ethanol and water in 99.5 weight percent purity

Chemical process design is a creative step of engineers that should be supported by different computer-aided design tools. Such tools should be simple and easy to use because process synthesis often means the investigation of a huge number of alternatives. During the design of the separation of liquid mixtures, among many others, distillation and pervaporation are usually simultaneously considered because pervaporation is frequently considered as an alternative to distillation. To easily compare the efficiencies of continuous pervaporation and flash distillation, we propose a new and simple method, the so-called membrane flash index (MFLI). The comparison is based upon vapor–liquid equilibrium data and the permeation data of a pervaporation membrane and therefore can be plotted on a common chart in the case of binary mixtures. The permeation values of organophilic and hydrophilic pervaporations can be calculated with the help of known separation factors and feed concentrations. The MFLI is dimensionless a...

The work is motivated by an industrial environmental problem, which is ethanol removal from aqueous mixture. To complete this goal organophilic pervaporation of ethanol/water mixture through commercially available Sulzer PERVAP™ 4060 is investigated to obtain information about the removal of ethanol. The experimental results are obtained at different feed ethanol concentrations and temperatures. Our experimental data are evaluated with the semi-empirical pervaporation model (Valentinyi et al. 2013) of our improvement and it is found that the model can be applied also for this organophilic case. Linear and quadratic surfaces suiting (Model III) are also investigated in order to estimate partial permeate flux. The results of parameter estimation and modelling of the pervaporation show that the novel model that considers the concentration dependency of the transport coefficient (Model II) is also capable for the modelling of organophilic pervaporation and results in a better fit to the experimental data, than basic pervaporation model (Model I) and Model III.