Simulation of Extractive Distillation Using CHEMCAD

Isobutyl acetate forms the binary azeotrope with Isobutyl alcohol. Extractive distillation is the method of separating close boiling azeotrope in presence of some suitable solvent or the mixture of the solvents. In case of separation of Isobutyl acetate and isobutyl alcohol the solvents used can be n-butyl propionate, dimethyl acetamide, 1-hexanol, and Dimethyl formamide or dimethyl sulfoxide. The separation of Isobutyl Alcohol-Isobutyl Acetate azeotropic mixture, we have carried out the simulation by means of package using commercial software CHEMCAD. The simulation and economic evaluation for the extractive distillation using above solvents using CHEMCAD package shows that n-butyl propionate is the best solvent among these solvents. The Isobutyl alcohol-Isobutyl acetate mixture is also pressure sensitive. So, Vacuum distillation can also be used to recover pure components with a simple change in pressure. But the cost requires for the vacuum distillation for the same separation is comparatively large than the extractive distillation using n-butyl propionate as a solvent.