Methanol-water Distillation

Qasim khan, Abdullah Arshad, Muhammad Imran Ahmad*

Email: imran.ahmed@uetpeshawar.edu.pk
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology,
Peshawar,
Pakistan
Aim of the Project Materials and Apparatus Result
Effect of change in Reflux ratio on
The following material were used in
actual number of stages.
the simulation:
 Effect of change in Reflux ratio on
optimal feed stage.  Methanol-water mixture.
Introduction Apparatus
Table 1 Composition of Feed and  DWSIM (version 6.4.9 Classic
Product UI, 64 Bits) open source
simulation software.
Stream Methanol Water  Laptop of HP Intel® Core™ i5-
3360M CPU @ 2.80 GHz, 4GB
RAM, 64Bit operating system.
Feed 0.36 0.64
Simulation Figure 2 Reflux ratio vs optimal feed
stage
Top 0.90 0.10 Table 2 Result of short cut column
product Property Value
Bottom 0.03 0.97
product Minimum Reflux 0.527638
Ratio
Process Flow Diagram Actual no of 3.81829
Stages
Optimal Feed 2.8613
Stages
Condenser Duty 2307 kW
Reboiler duty 2481.8 kW Figure 3 Impact of Reflux ratio on actual
Stripping Vapor 63.721 mol/s feed stages

Rectify Vapor 63.7232 mol/s Conclusions

There is the inverse relationship
between reflux ratio and actual stages
i.e, increase in reflux ratio decrease the
Table 3 Value of Reflux ratio, Feed actual stages.
stages, actual stages, Reboiler and
Condenser duty There is the inverse relation between
optimal feed stream and reflux ratio i.e.
Reflux Feed Actual Reboiler Condense
Figure 1 Process flow diagram of if we increase reflux ratio then optimal
ratio stages stages duty r duty
Methanol-water Distillation feed stages decrease
1 3.72412 7.28393 1821.89 1648
1.2 3.37579 6.6026 1986.69 1812.8
Methodology 1.4 3.14718 6.1555 2151.49 1977.6
References
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 M. Levey. “Chemistry and Chemical
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Elsevier, 1959, pp. 36
2 2.763 5.4084 2645.88 2472
 J.D. Seader, J.H. Ernest, Separation
2.2 2.687 5.2571 2810.68 2636.8
Process Principles, 2nd ed., John Wiley
2.4 2.62412 5.13246 2975.48 2801.6 and Sons, Inc. New York, USA, 2001
2.6 2.5706 5.02794 3140.28 2966.4  C. Lyon, “Methanol Recovery
2.8 2.52519 4.93897 3305.08 3131.2 Optimization via Distillation”, Final
3 2.4855 4.86229 3469.88 3296 Project Report, ChE 460 G.G. Brown
Industries Inc. 2012.
POSTER PRESENTATION, 2021, Chemical Engineering Department, UET Peshawar, July 07, 2021
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