RESPONSE SURFACE METHODOLOGY TO EVALUATE ENERGY IN EXTRACTIVE DISTILLATION PROCESS FOR THE MIXTURE OF METHYLAL AND METHANOL WITH GLYCEROL AS ENTRAINER

Glycerol could be possible to be an entrainer to separate the mixture of methylal and methanol (minimum-boiling azeotropic mixture) for the extractive distillation process. The effect of the structure parameters (total stages of column, feed locations) and operation parameters (entrainer to feed mass ratio, temperature of entrainer feeding, and mass reflux ratio) in the extractive distillation column on product purity and reboiler heat duty was investigated based on response surface methodology (RSM). Results demonstrated that the operational variables had more significant effect on reboiler heat duty than the structural variables for the ED column. Moreover, the influence of the interaction between temperature of entrainer feeding and entrainer to feed ratio influenced on the reboiler heat duty for ED column. The predicted results with the RSM provided good agreement with the simulated results to optimize the process parameters of ED column to achieve the target values, and energy consumption in reboiler heat duty was 73,293.4 kJ/h.