Azeotrope Process Flowsheets & Simulations
Explore 6 validated, solved Azeotrope simulation flowsheets in MaximaLabs — real components: ethanol, water, ethylene_glycol, methanol, acetone, isopropanol. Open any one directly in your browser.
Solved via: NRTL.
Ethanol–water distillation
An 8-stage column concentrating ethanol overhead toward the azeotrope (the headline demo).
4 unit ops • NRTL
17 0
View & openEthanol dehydration (pervaporation)
A hydrophilic pervaporation membrane pulls water out of near-azeotropic ethanol — crossing the 89 mol% ethanol-water azeotrope that ordinary distillation cannot. Permeate is ~95% water; the retentate is dried past the azeotrope.
4 unit ops • NRTL
17 0
View & openExtractive distillation (ethanol/water with ethylene glycol)
Near-azeotropic ethanol/water (85 mol% ethanol) can't be pushed past the 89 mol% azeotrope by ordinary distillation. A heavy, high-boiling entrainer (ethylene glycol) fed near the top of the column raises water's relative volatility enough to pull overhead ethanol past the azeotrope in one pass; a second column then strips water overhead from the glycol, regenerating it as the bottoms product. The classic extractive-distillation textbook case (Luyben, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2006, 45, 4625).
7 unit ops • NRTL
19 0
View & openPressure-swing azeotropic distillation (methanol/acetone)
Methanol and acetone form a minimum-boiling azeotrope whose composition shifts noticeably with pressure — enough that two ordinary columns run at different pressures can cross the azeotrope without an entrainer. Column 1 (low pressure) takes pure acetone bottoms and a near-azeotropic overhead; that overhead is compressed into Column 2 (high pressure), whose new, shifted azeotrope composition lets pure methanol come off the bottoms (the recycle of Column 2's now off-azeotrope overhead back to Column 1 is reported as a product here rather than closed, the same open-loop simplification the acetone-water example already uses). Luyben, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2008, 47, 2696.
7 unit ops • NRTL
17 0
View & openWaste solvent recovery — extractive distillation (IPA/water)
A pharmaceutical waste isopropanol/water stream (near the ~68 mol% IPA azeotrope) is fed to an extractive column with a high-boiling entrainer feeding in a few stages above it; a second column strips the entrainer back out of the bottoms for reuse. Honesty note: the brief's original entrainer, DMSO, doesn't have a pinned NRTL isopropanol binary in this codebase's databank (only DMSO-water is pinned), so this uses sulfolane instead — a real, industrially-standard extractive/physical solvent with a genuine pinned NRTL isopropanol binary. At this stage count and solvent-to-feed ratio the entrainer effect is real but modest (overhead reaches ~82 mol% IPA, up from the 68% feed) — a sharper, near-anhydrous cut would need more stages/reflux or a higher solvent ratio than what this session verified converges reliably.
7 unit ops • NRTL
18 0
View & openAnhydrous ethanol — extractive distillation past the azeotrope (NRTL)
Producing fuel-grade anhydrous ethanol from a near-azeotropic ethanol/water feed using ethylene glycol as the extractive entrainer. Ordinary distillation is capped at the 89.4 mol% ethanol azeotrope; the high-boiling glycol raises water's relative volatility so ethanol crosses its azeotrope and leaves the extractive column essentially pure, while a vacuum solvent-recovery column strips the water and recycles the glycol. This is modeled with the NRTL activity package on pinned DECHEMA binaries for every pair (ethanol/water, ethanol/glycol, water/glycol) — the non-ideal, azeotrope-crossing VLE a cubic equation of state structurally cannot reproduce (Peng-Robinson stays trapped at the ~89% azeotrope). Honesty note: NRTL binaries come from the bundled DECHEMA VLE Data Collection (via ChemSep/DWSIM), not fitted here; the solvent-recovery column runs under vacuum to keep the glycol below its decomposition temperature.
7 unit ops • NRTL
19 0
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