Vapor-liquid equilibrium of ethanol-water system in the presence of molecular sieves

Adsorptive distillation is a new process to separate liquid mixtures in a p acked distillation column. It depends on using active packing material inst ead of inert packing material in a packed distillation column. The active p acking material can affect the intermolecular forces among the system compo nents and thus alter its vapor-liquid equilibrium (VLE). The VLE of the eth anol-water system at 1 atm was studied using a circulation still in the abs ence and in the presence of different amounts of 4 Angstrom molecular sieve s. The results obtained showed that the VLE of the system was altered in th e presence of the molecular sieves, the azeotropic point of the system (at 89.7 mol% ethanol in the normal case) was eliminated and considerable separ ation was achieved for a mixture of azeotropic composition, and the alterat ion in the VLE of a given binary mixture is a function of the pore size and the amount of the molecular sieves.