Experimental study of vapor-liquid equilibrium and optimization of pressure-swing distillation for methanol-dimethyl carbonate binary system

Abstract

The mixture of methanol and dimethyl carbonate is characterized by an azeotropic point, thus, it is impossible to separate the azeotrope into respective high-purity products by general distillation. Herein, the separation of a methanol-dimethyl carbonate mixture via pressure-swing distillation was evaluated based on modeling and optimization of the separation process to obtain high-purity dimethyl carbonate. Currently, no experimental data on vapor-liquid equilibrium of methanol-dimethyI carbonate system is available in existing references. And even PRO/ II, Aspen Plus, and ChemCAD simulation programs do not include a built-in binary Interaction parameter of thermo dynamic model of methanol-dimethyl carbonate system for accurate calculation. Therefore, the vapor-liquid equilibrium of the methanol-dimethyl carbonate binary system was experimentally evaluated under low-pressure and atmospheric pressure conditions and the binary interaction parameters were deduced from the non-random two-liquid model regression using the experimental data. The obtained binary intraction parameters were applied in modeling.of the pressure-swing distillation process. Reboiler heat duty values from simulations under high-low pressure and low-high pressure configuration processes were compared and the process was optimized to minimize the heat duty. Dimethyl Carbonate Vapor-liquid equilibrium Pressure-swing distillation.