Development of a system for screening potential entrainers in azeotropic distillation processes

In the development of azeotropic distillation processes, screening potential entrainers that make separation feasible is generally acknowledged to be very difficult. In this article, an attempt has been made to develop a system for screening potential entrainers used in azeotropic distillation processes. The system has the following merits: (1) the system can present entrainers that satisfy the necessary conditions to make separation feasible through azeotropic distillation and the corresponding feasible process configurations derived from them: (2) information required by the system is qualitative, such as the existence of azeotropes. the order of boiling points of pure materials and azeotropes, and immiscibility of liquid phases. Such information can be supplied from azeotropic and liquid-liquid equilibrium databases. The effectiveness of the system is demonstrated on a number of practical azeotropic distillation processes.