Enhanced Separation of Benzene and Cyclohexane by Homogeneous Extractive Distillation using Ionic Liquids as Entrainers

•The cyclohexane/benzene extractive distillation with ionic liquids has been studied.•The Head-space gas chromatography technique has been used to determine VLE data.•The NRTL model has been used to correlate the experimental VLE data.•The [4bmpy][TCM] was the best candidate and implemented in the Aspen Plus simulator.•The overall process was simulated and the associated operating costs were estimated.