Saving Natural Resources with Extractive Heterogeneous-Azeotropic Distillation

Abstract

Efficient processes save natural resources, e.g. chemicals, energy carriers. The Extractive Heterogeneous Azeotropic Distillation (EHAD) is an efficient, novel process for the separation of highly non-ideal liquid mixtures. On the one hand, it consumes less energy than any other separation process and on the other hand the separated compounds of highly non-ideal mixtures can be reused. The EHAD contributes to the saving of natural resources and sustainability. The efficiency of the EHAD is presented on the separation of three highly non-ideal quaternary mixtures of fine chemistry and printing company origins. In this work, the comparison of the efficiency of different separation technologies are compared based on their energy consumptions. It is concluded that the EHAD based separation technology needs the least energy among the investigated alternatives and also enables the recovery and reuse of precious organic compounds.