Comparison of extractive distillation and pressure-swing distillation for acetone/chloroform separation

The separation of acetone from chloroform is difficult because the highly nonideal vapor-liquid equilibrium produces a maximum-boiling azeotrope. An earlier paper (Luyben, W. L. (2008). Control of the maximum-boiling acetone/chloroform azeotropic distillation system. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, 47, 6140-6149) discussed the use of extractive distillation for making this separation. This paper studies the use of pressure-swing distillation for making the same separation. Results show that the extractive distillation process is much more attractive from the standpoint of both capital investment and energy consumption. But pressure-swing distillation avoids the potential problem of product contamination by the extractive solvent that must be added to the binary system. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.