Economic and environmental assessment for purification of acetonitrile and isopropanol by reactive coupling extractive distillation

Large amount of high purity acetonitrile and isopropanol are required as the raw material to meet the growth requirements of rapidly the chemical industries development. The high demands for acetonitrile and isopropanol have created the need for an efficient sustainable process to reduce the energy consumption which satisfies the environment regulations. Thus, a sustainable process of reactive coupling extractive distillation to separate acetonitrile/isopropanol/water ternary mixture is proposed. The intensified processes of heat-integrated combination intermediate reboiler are explored to further reducing energy consumption. The comparisons from the views of 4E which contains energy, exergy, economic and environment are conducted to assessment proposed processes benefits. The advanced intensification process of reactive extractive distillation (RED-HI-IR) has the best energy saving potential and economic benefits which achieves the reductions on energy, total annual cost and gas emissions of approximately 54.16%, 39.02% and 54.16% respectively, and the total exergy efficiency is up to 97.52%. Thus, heat-integrated and intermediate reboiler technology used of distillation is of significance for the sustainable chemical process development.