Suggest to the chemical company on the type of separator that able to achieve 99 %

purity of ethanol at the end of the separation process (Feed: mixture of 40 % ethanol
and 60 % water). Support your suggestion with VLE data and other relevant
information.

To suggest to the chemical company on the type of separator that able to achieve 99
% purity of ethanol with the feed of 40 v/v% ethanol-water system, the vapour liquid
equilibrium data need to be study. In the ethanol-water system, alcohol always has a lower
boiling point than water which are 78.5 °C for ethanol and 100 °C for water. The ethanol-
water relationship between gaseous and liquid is shown in Figure X.

Based on the VLE data in Figure X, assuming a mixture of 40 v/v% which is 13.67
mole% of ethanol and water is supposed to be separated by distillation, a distillate that is
about 48 % of ethanol and 52 % of water is produced. Even if the distillation process is
carried out for third, fourth or even more time, the maximum vapour composition that could
be obtain for the ethanol would be around 90 %. It is because as the boiling process is
continued it will eventually reach a point which called azeotrope, where the composition of
vapour that boiled off from the liquid was the same with the composition as the liquid from
which it was generated (Katzen, Madson and Moon, 1999, pp.272-273).

Figure X: Vapour Liquid Equilibrium for Ethanol-Water System at Atmospheric

Pressure
 However, simple distillation is incapable to separate the azeotrope mixture. The five
common method used to separate the azeotrope are extractive distillation, azeotropic
distillation, distillation using salts, pressure swing distillation, and reactive distillation.
Among this, the extractive and azeotrope distillation process are most used techniques in the
industry to separate ethanol from water due to its high separation and cost efficiency.
According to the experiment conducted by Miranda, Filho and Maciel(2020), it have proven
that both extractive and azeotrope distillation are able to achieve purities of 99 % of ethanol
at the end of the separation. Nevertheless, when comparing both processes, the extractive
distillation is more suggested as it is more advantage than azeotrope distillation concerning
the reboiler heat duty. Due to that, extractive distillation is proved to be the most suitable
separator to chemical company for achieving purity 99 % ethanol.

In extractive distillation, a third substance is added to separating two substances with

similar boiling point to change the boiling point of one of the substances therefore easier for
them to separate. Extractive distillation at least involves two columns as shown in Figure X.
in the first column, the feed that contain the ethanol-water system is added to the lower part
of the column while the solvent feed is added higher in the column. The lighter component,
ethanol with higher relative volatility will be concentrated and leaved as a distillate product
from the top of the column. While both heavy component and solvent will be leaved as the
bottom product and introduced into the recovery column. In the recovery column, the solvent
will be removed from the mixture as bottom product and recycled back to the first column
and the distillate that leave as the top product is relatively pure heavy component which is
water (Erickson, 2021).
 Figure X: Flow Diagram of Extractive Distillation Process.

Reference

Katzen, R., Madson, P.W., Moon, G.D., 1999. Ethanol distillation: the fundamentals.
[ebook]. Available at: Semantic Scholar <https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Ethanol-
distillation-%3A-the-fundamentals-269-Chapter-Katzen-Madson/
3aae02f2870d139cc9987a255396a697b24e5980> [Accessed 15 November 2022]

Miranda, N.T., Filho, R.M., Maciel, M.R.W., 2020. Distillation processes for anhydrous
ethanol production using Aspen Plus Simulator. Chemical Engineering Transactions, [e-
journal] 80, pp. 43-48. 10.3303/CET2080008

Erickson, A., 2021. Extractive distillation: What is it and when should it be used?. [online]
Available at: <https://www.processingmagazine.com/home/article/21241815/extractive-
distillation-what-is-it-and-when-should-it-be-used> [Accessed 15 November 2022]