USE OF IONIC LIQUIDS FOR THE SEPARATION OF AZEOTROPIC MIXTURES VIA EXTRACTIVE DISTILLATION

MATTHEW CHARNLEY; ALFONSINA E. ANDREATTA; JOAN F. BRENNECKE

South Bend, Inidana

Jornada; The 6th Annual University of Notre Dame Undergraduate Scholars Conference and College of Science Joint Annual Meeting (COS-JAM); 2013

Universidad de Notre Dame

Pure compounds are needed in every branch of chemistry and chemical engineering. It is therefore often necessary to separate a mixture into the pure compounds that compose it. In most instances, distillation is the process of choice, since it is fairly simple and can generally be tuned to produce a separation of any desired purity. Distillation works on the difference in relative volatility of the different compounds in a mixture. By repeatedly vaporizing and condensing the mixture, the more volatile component will preferentially move towards the top of the column, producing a separation.However, in some cases, distillation can not be used. One of these cases is when the mixture forms an azeotrope. In this case, the separation can be carried out using pressure swing distillation, or adding an entrainer or salt to change the relative volatility. However, pressure swing is very expensive, and the entrainer can either be hard to separate, or can damage the process equipment. Ionic liquids provide what may be an ideal solution to this problem. Firstly, they act as a salt, which allows them to easily change the relative volatility of mixtures. Secondly, they are a liquid, which means they will not damage pumps or other process equipment. Finally, they have non-existent vapor pressure, so they will not evaporate and can easily be separated from the mixture after the separation.  In this project, the Ethanol-Ethyl Acetate azeotrope was analyzed for how different ionic liquids interacted with various mixtures of these two components.