Contribution to a sustainable process for the production of isopropanol through the proper management of thermodynamic data

Abstract

Iso-propanol is a compound of interest widely used in various sectors, both industrially and in scientific research. However, its purification has drawbacks as it forms an azeotrope with water, making separation difficult. In this work the separation of the azeotrope water+iso-propanol by liquid-liquid extraction using ethyl pentanoate as entrainer is studied. Following a sequence of tasks such as experimentation↔modeling↔simulation, this work presents new LLE information of the binary and ternary systems involved. The feasibility of the process is analyzed in a commercial simulator using a model generated from experimental information, and VLE data estimated with UNIFAC. The ternary system produces a type I liquid-liquid equilibrium, the correlation of which is performed with acceptable results. The simulation results show that the liquid-liquid extraction, properly integrated with a fractional distillation, allows the recovery of almost 100% of iso-propanol with a purity close to 81% (w/w).