Dynamic and control of high purity heterogeneous azeotropic distillation process

The three phase azeotropic distillation is a common separation process in chemical and petrochemical industries. This is a complex process, presenting high instabilities. In this work, it was used HYSYS. Plant commercial simulator for calculating the ethanol-water separation using different kiinds of entrainers. The following studies were carried out: steady state and dynamic simulations, which can lead to different process performance according to the liquid phase distribution in the decanter, optimization of the operating conditions in terms of energy consumption and entrainer selection taking into account economical aspects, environmental restrictions and column control.