Saline extractive distillation process for ethanol purification

The aim of this work is to simulate and to optimize a saline extractive dis tillation process for purification of ethanol from the ethanol-water binary system. All the work was developed using ASPEN PLUS simulator, version 10. 1-0, and the NRTL thermodynamic model developed for calculating activity co efficients of electrolytic systems, having as goal to get the anhydride eth anol (99.7 wt.%). In the development of this study, four saline agents were tested (NaCl, KCl, KI, CaCl2). The complete process and a methodology to o ptimize it were established in the simulator in such a way all variables we re optimized. It was verified that using only the saline extractive distill ation process, it is possible to purify the ethanol from the fermentation b roth composition obtaining a product with high purity. Finally, a comparati ve study using electrolyte distillation process and the integrated distilla tion process (simple and extractive distillation) was carried out. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.