Process simulation and distillation unit design vacuum fractionation of rhodinol from citronella oil

Abstract

The application of biodiesel will increase in accordance with the government's mandatory program for saving fossil fuels. The challenging would come from particulate levels and water content. One of the efforts to fix the issues is by adding rhodinol from citronella oil as an additive. This research was conducted to design a vacuum distillation process which has 500L of capacity and determine the design of the fractionation distillation unit. Simulation was carried out using the Aspen HYSYS software. The result of the simulation is expected to provide an overview of the fractionation process that would comply with the standard after some data validation. The simulation was applied by vacuum pressure in 4-5 mbar and variation of reflux ratios 1,2, and 3. The best simulation obtained was reflux ratio 2 at 47.80% geraniol and 61.34% citronellol concentrations. The simulation also obtained the following results are maximum and minimum pipe diameter of 0.04 m 0.02 m, the maximum and minimum thickness of 3.7 mm 2.8 m, column height of 10.5 m, column diameter of 0.2412 m, and thickness of 3 mm, condenser length and diameter of 1.11 m and 0.2032 m, reboiler length, and diameter of 1.5 m and 0.6515 m.