Hybrid Pervaporation/Distillation Process For Ethanol - Water Separation, Effect Of Distillation Column Side Stream

Separation operation is the crucial part of the chemical industry. With rising energy prices and increased focus on efficiency and sustainability, the development of alternative separation processes to conventional separation processes constitute major areas of opportunity in the chemical industry. Distillation is one of the most used separation processes in industry and is widely used for the separation of liquid mixtures. Energy requirement for distillation is more and a separation involving close boiling point mixture is not feasible in conventional units. Hybrid separation processes combine different unit operations and constitute a promising design option for the separation of complex mixtures. Hybrid separation processes are energetically more efficient compared to conventional distillation. This is demonstrated using ethanol-water as the model system and separation by Distillation-Pervaporation (D + PV) hybrid unit. A simple, user friendly tool has been developed to study different pervaporation and hybrid configurations. Hybrid process configuration with distillation column side stream is compared with simple hybrid process configuration. It is observed from that for same feed, energy requirement for process with side stream with drawl requires 9 % less energy as compared to process without side stream with drawl.