MaximaLabs
Back to gallery

Solvent recovery Process Flowsheets & Simulations

Explore 3 validated, solved Solvent recovery simulation flowsheets in MaximaLabs — real components: acetone, water, isopropanol, sulfolane. Open any one directly in your browser.

Solved via: NRTL.

FEED
feed
dist
btms
Qc
Qr
COL
Acetone
Water
Reference model (ChemSep)

Acetone–water distillation

A 12-stage column recovers acetone overhead from a dilute aqueous solvent-recovery feed — a common industrial acetone/solvent-recycling duty.

4 unit ops • NRTL

232 0

View & open
Waste FEED
Sulfolane FEED
feed
dist
btms
Qc
Qr
Extcol
IPA Product
feed
dist
btms
Qc
Qr
Stripper
Water OVHD
Sulfolane Recovered
Puerto Rico (pharmaceutical manufacturing corridor)

Waste 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.

7 unit ops • NRTL

226 0

View & open
Spent
feed
dist
btms
Qc
Qr
COL
Recovered
Aqueous
Solvent recovery unit

Acetone recovery — batch still vs. continuous column

A spent-solvent stream (60 mol% acetone, 40% water) recovered two ways, so the Analysis panel's Batch distillation (Rayleigh) tool has something to be compared against — it had no curated example, and a batch calculation only means anything next to the continuous alternative. The flowsheet is the continuous answer: a shortcut column recovering 98% of the acetone overhead and rejecting 98% of the water, giving 59.8 mol/s of distillate at high purity for 4.4 MW of reboiler duty. The batch answer (Analysis > Batch distillation). Charge 100 mol of the same mixture to a still and boil it down until the pot falls to 10 mol% acetone: you distil 67.4 mol and the average distillate is only 84.2 mol% acetone. That is the Rayleigh result and it is the whole lesson — a simple batch still has one theoretical stage, so the vapour it makes is enriched but never pure, and the composition drifts the entire time. Reaching column-grade purity in a batch needs reflux and cuts (a batch rectifier), or a second pass. Why the comparison is the point. Batch equipment is cheap, flexible, and right for small or campaign volumes; the column is right when the duty is continuous and purity matters. Having both numbers on the same feed is what makes that a decision rather than a preference.

4 unit ops • NRTL

135 0

View & open

Stop fighting legacy software. Build your first flowsheet in 60 seconds.