Desarrollo de un proceso de simulación en aspen plus para la destilación de etanol – agua

Abstract

In the present work, a simulation was applied for a chemical process, distillation, in which the extractive distillation technique was used for the production of dehydrated ethanol and pure water from the azeotropic mixture of ethanol-water; Ethylene glycol was used as a solvent because it is one of the solvents most used in the industry worldwide. The simulation was performed using Aspen Plus in steady state and the NRTL thermodynamic model was used. A molar flow of 400 kg / h of the ethanol-water mixture was used as the feed stream, in which a distillate stream greater than 97% of dehydrated ethanol and a recovery of 99% of ethylene glycol were obtained. To define the specification design in the simulation, data taken from the bibliographic source was used. A system of two distillation columns connected to each other was modeled, the first column was used for the distillation of ethanol and, the second column for the recovery of ethylene glycol, this in turn is recycled and recirculated to the first column, entering a current different from supply current. The objective of the simulation was to obtain dehydrated ethanol as distilled product (column 1) and very pure water and ethylene glycol (column 2). The efficiency of the extractive distillation simulation was determined using the ethanol-water-ethylene glycol composition graphs. Aspen Plus has proven its usefulness and reliability through its use in the chemical industry and in the research field.