Experimental Study and Thermodynamic Modeling of Separation of Toluene from Heptane by a Deep Eutectic Solvent

Document Type : Research paper

Authors

1 2. School of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Hakim Sabzevari University, Sabzevar, Iran

2 Chemical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran, Tehran

Abstract

Azeotropic point is one of the most important limitations in petrochemical units that prevents the separation and purification of various materials and products. In this study, deep eutectic solvents were used as the brittle azeotrope breaker for a mixture of heptane and toluene. Recently, low eutectic solvents have become increasingly popular as environmentally friendly green solvents to replace volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These solvents consist of a combination of a hydrogen bond acceptor (such as choline chloride) and a hydrogen bond donor (such as urea, thiourea, and 1,2-propandiol). In this study, the deep eutectic solvents were synthesized with a ratio of 1:3 for choline chloride and thiourea as solvent number one, and a ratio of 1:2 for choline chloride and 1,2-propandiol as solvent number two, respectively. The separation process was performed at 298.15 K and atmospheric pressure. The predictive UNIFAC model, was used to model the mentioned systems. The mean deviation (RMSD) for the first and second systems were calculated to be 3.38 and 2.99, respectively.

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