The Maximum Boiling Acetone-Chloroform Azeotropic Distillation
system
Bloch Sohil Y.; Mehulkumar Sutariya
Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology, Surat
Email: blochsohil80@[Link]
Unit System: Pressure-atm; Molar Flow-kmol/hr; Other-SI
Background
Hydrocarbons like Acetone and Chloroform are important raw materials in the medical area. They often
require high-purity Chloroform and Acetone. Chloroform is widely used in pesticide formulations, as a
solvent for fats, oils, rubber, alkaloids, waxes, gutta-percha, and resins, as a cleansing agent,
grain fumigant, in fire extinguishers, and in the rubber industry.CDCl3 is a common solvent used in NMR
spectroscopy. A mixture of chlorine bleach with ethanol and acetone will produce chloroform, this
reaction often gives us an azeotropes of Acetone and Chloroform. Which must be separated out to obtain
highly pure Chloroform and Acetone. The mixer of Chloroform and Acetone cannot be separated out by
the simple distillation column because of the less difference between their boiling point(near 5 K) and
same boiling point behavior of azeotrope.
Extractive Distillation of Close Boiling Compounds
Extractive distillation is the method of separating close boiling compounds from each other by carrying
out the distillation in a multiple columns in the presence of an added liquid or liquid mixture.1 This Liquid
or Liquid mixture is known as extractive agent or entrainer. The presence of the entrainer alter the
volatility of compounds and thus the degree of separation is increase with the same numbers of plate.
This entrainer must have high boiling point than the compounds which are going to separated.
Description of Flow-Sheet
The flow sheet contain total two distillation columns named “Extractive distillation column" and
“Entrainer recovery column". Here we use the Di Methyl Sulfoxide (DMSO) as Entrainer and mixer of
Acetone and Chloroform as feed. The presence of DMSO alters the relative volatility between Acetone
and Chloroform and to make Acetone move toward the top part and Chloroform move to the bottom part
of the column. The “Extractive distillation" take Entrainer and feed and give the pure Acetone as top
product and the bottom product which has the Chloroform and DMSO are enter to the “Entrainer
recovery" column; which separate out Chloroform and the DMSO, this recovered sulfolane are recycled
to the “Extractive distillation". Feed rate with the composition of compounds and the other necessary
data for the column are shown in the table in Result section with the Top and Bottom products.
Result
Name Extractive Distillation Entrainer Recovery
Pressure 1.1 1.1
(atm)
Total Stages 22 12
Feed (Kmol/hr) 100 214.3
%(mol/mol) Acetone (50%) Acetone (0.10%)
%(mol/mol) Chloroform (50%) Chloroform (23.22%)
%(mol/mol) DMSO (76.68%)
Feed Stage 10 6
nd
2 Feed (Kmol/hr) 164.4 -
(%mol) DMSO (100%)
2nd Feed stage 4 -
Top (Kmol/hr) 50 50
(%mol) Acetone (99.5%) Acetone (0.44%)
(%mol) Chloroform (0.5%) Chloroform (99.55%)
Bottom (Kmol/hr) 214.3 164.4
(%mol) Acetone (0.1%)
(%mol) Chloroform (23.22%)
(%mol) DMSO (76.68%) DMSO (99.99%)
References
1. William L. Luyben; “Control of the Maximum-Boiling Acetone/Chloroform Azeotropic Distillation
System”; Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2008, 47, 6140–6149