Separation of 1-Butene and N-butane by Extractive Distillation
Mr. Roshan Hirani & Meet Dave
G. H. Patel College of Engineering & Technology
Problem Statement:-
Separation of 1-Butene and N-butane by Extractive Distillation using Acetonitrile and water mixture.
System of unit:-
The system of unit used in the flowsheet is custom unit system 5 in which temperature is taken in ℃, pressure is taken in
bar, molar flow rate is taken in Kmol/h and mass flow rate is taken in Kg/h.
Background and Description:-
Extractive distillation requires solvent, and using appropriate solvent for the particular process gives a significant results in
designing of extractive distillation process.1-Butene and N-butane have very close boiling point, therefore their relative
volatility is very low and forms azeotrope with each other. So, we require addition of the solvent to increase relative volatility
of component. This solvent increases the volatility and make the separation process economical. In this process one
component with the purity (100%) is obtained as the top product of first distillation column and the mixture of solvent and
second component is obtained as the bottom product of first distillation column, which is called residual product. This
residual product can be easily separated in secondary distillation column because of the solvents higher boiling point and the
second component lower boiling point. This is commercially used in the separation of the hydrocarbon mixture with low
relative volatility in petroleum refinery.
In this flowsheet separation of mixture of 1-Butene and n-Butane by extractive distillation using mixture of Acetonitrile and
water as a solvent. Here, distillation column(DC-01) with 72 stages is operated at variable pressure with top pressure:-
450000 N/m2 and bottom pressure:-630000 N/m2. Feed stream was feeded at 41th stage and solvent stream was feeded at 6th
stage of distillation column (DC-01). The azeotropic mixture of 1-Butene and N-Butane is separated with help of mixture of
Acetonitrile and water as a solvent in distillation column (DC-01) and as a result pure 1-butene is obtained as a overhead
product while the bottom product of DC-01 is sent to solvent recovery column(DC-02) with 17 stages and operated at
variable pressure with top pressure:- 200000 N/m2 and bottom pressure:-260000 N/m2. Bottom product from DC-01 is feeded
to solvent recovery column (DC-02) at 9th stage and as a result pure N-Butane is obtained as a overhead product of DC-02
and the bottom product of DC-02 containing mixture of Acetonitrile and water as a solvent is then recycle back.
Flowsheet:-
Results:-
Object Feed Solvent 1-Butene Bottom N-Butane Bottom Units
mixed-1 Mixed-2
Temperature 25.00 19.86 38.24 137.97 18.52 116.56 °C
Pressure 1.01325 1 4.5 6.3 2 2.6 bar
Molar Flow 43.36 532.07 35.07 540.36 7.56 532.8 Kmol ⁄h
Molar Fraction 0.8055 5.18E-06 0.9911 0.0003 0.0217 1.06E-05
(Mixture) /1-
Butene
Molar Fraction 0.1944 0.0017 0.0010 0.0172 0.9782 0.0036
(Mixture) /N-
Butane
Molar Fraction 0.0000 0.7989 7.93E-07 0.7866 2.33E-09 0.7978
(Mixture)
/Acetonitrile
Molar Fraction 0.0000 0.1993 0.0077 0.1957 1.67E-12 0.1985
(Mixture) /Water
