EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION ON ENTRAINER / SOLVENT PERFORMANCE FOR ACETONE - CHLOROFORM, ACETONE - METHANOL AND BENZENE - CYCLOHEXANE SYSTEMS

Azeotropes are commonly occurring phenomena in distillation operations that leads to complexity in separation of the components. Azeotropes are due to excessive positive or negative deviation from ideality. They require a key component called entrainer to separate them. In the present study three azeotropic systems namely Acetone - Chloroform, Acetone - Methanol and Benzene - Cyclohexane were investigated experimentally to identify the performance of entrainers in separating them using azeotropic distillation. The experiments were conducted using an Othmer VLE still and the results are presented. Based on the experimentations it was found that water (entrainer) gave the best recovery for the acetone - chloroform and acetone - methanol systems and chlorobenzene yielded more separation for the benzene - cyclohexane system.