Study on Improvement of Separation of Ethanol-Water System by Batch Azeotropic Distillation

Batch azeotropic distillation is used to separate azeotropic mixtures.Because it has both advantages of batch distillation and azeotropic distillation,batch azeotropic distillation has been becoming more and more important for the products of small scale and high extra value,such as the fine chemicals,pharmaceuticals and so on.The operation mode of regular batch azeotropic distillation is improved: the entrainer is refluxing at the bottom of tower.An experiment for the separation of ethanol-water system with using hexane as entrainer by improved batch azeotropic distillation is discussed.The results show that the improved mode of batch azeotropic distillation is feasible;compared with the regular operation mode,this method has high product purity and yield with the same operating parameters,which is up to 99.9% and 82% respectively.