A case study on separation of IPA-water mixture by extractive distillation using aspen plus

Extractive distillation is one of the popular methods being leveraged to separate isopropyl alcohol (IPA) from water present in waste stream in semi-conductor industries. In this context, the paper aims to carry out simulation study for separation of isopropyl alcohol-water azeotrope mixture using ethylene glycol as entrainer. In particular, temperature, pressure and concentration profile has been studied. Aspen plus® (version 8.8) has been used as simulation tool and optimum number of stages for the simulation turns out to be 42. The results show that top of the column contains IPA of 99.974 mol % purity and bottom product contains water-ethylene glycol mixture. Moreover, sensitivity analysis for different parameters and analysis of residue curve for ternary system have been also performed.