II / DISTILLATION / Extractive Distillation 1013

Extractive Distillation
F.-M. Lee, GTC Technology Corporation, tilities of the key components in the two interrelated
Houston, TX, USA liquid phases and the common vapour phase, accord-
Copyright ^ 2000 Academic Press ing to the following formulae:

r"(1r p1r)/(2r p2r)

Introduction

e"(1e p1e)/(2e p2e)
In the Rrst half of the twentieth century, extractive
distillation (ED) became an important industrial where
r and
e are the relative volatilities of compo-
process when World War II demanded high purity nents 1 and 2, respectively, in the rafRnate phase and
toluene for explosive production and butadiene for extract phase; 1r and 2r are the activity coefRcients in
synthetic rubber production. Over the years, substan- the rafRnate phase, and 1e and 2e are the activity
tial developments in ED have been carried out in coefRcients in the extract phase; and p1r, p2r, p1e, and
terms of novel solvent discovery for a particular sep- p2e are the vapour pressures of the pure components
aration, as well as the development of more sophisti- (which can be estimated from an Antoine equation).
cated ED tower internal designs. In the petroleum and A schematic diagram of a typical ED process is
petrochemical industries, ED has been found effective presented in Figure 1. During a normal run, a polar,
in separating mixtures of aromatics/nonaromatics, high-boiling (low volatility) solvent is introduced to
dioleRns/oleRns, oleRns/parafRns and naphthenes/ near the top of the ED tower. As the nonvolatile
parafRns. solvent Sows down the column, it preferentially asso-
This article will brieSy review the basic concept of ciates the more polar components in the ascending
ED, and summarize the development of ED technolo- vapour mixture, thus increasing the relative volatility
gies for the applications in the following areas: between the polar and less polar components. The
1. Aromatic puriRcation from reRning and petro- process feed stream is introduced to the middle por-
chemical streams. tion of the ED tower. The more polar components are
2. CycloparafRn (cyclohexane or cyclopentane) re- concentrated in the rich solvent, exiting the bottom of
covery from naphtha or natural gas liquid. the ED tower, while the less polar components are
3. Light oleRns from light hydrocarbon mixtures. concentrated in the overhead rafRnate stream. The
tower reSux stream is provided to knock down the
The basis of ED is the increase of relative volatility entrained solvent from the overhead rafRnate stream.
between the close-boiling components caused by in- The solution, rich in polar compounds from the
troducing a selective solvent, which has stronger af- bottom of the ED tower, is fed to the solvent stripper,
Rnity with one type of the components in the mixture. where the polar components are stripped from the
If there is a single liquid phase (no phase separation), solvent by heat alone or by heat and a stripping gas,
the solvent selectivity can be measured from the ex- such as steam. The lean solvent is then recycled to the
perimentally observed relative volatility (
) between ED tower from the bottom of the stripper.
the key components in the presence of solvent as:

"(Y1/X1)/(Y2/X2) Aromatic Puri\cation from Re\ning

and Petrochemical Streams
where X1 and X2 are the mole fractions of compo-
nents 1 and 2, respectively, in the liquid phase, and Advantages and Principle of ED Technology
Y1 and Y2 are those in the vapour. All compositions
Although liquid}liquid extraction (LLE) technologies
are measured on a solvent-free basis.
have dominated the industrial processes for purifying
In some cases, liquid-phase separation may occur
benzene, toluene, xylene (BTX) aromatics from reRn-
in the ED tower, especially in the upper portion of the
ing and petrochemical streams, ED technologies have
tower where less polar components are concentrated.
gained ground quickly since the 1980s for more re-
Under this condition, the solvent phase can reject
cent grassroots plant installations. In comparison to
a second liquid phase, which can be deRned as the
LLE, ED has the following advantages:
rafRnate liquid phase. The liquid in the solvent-rich
phase is deRned as the extract liquid phase. The 1. Lower capital costs. ED requires two major pro-
solvent selectivity is determined by the relative vola- cess units (ED tower and solvent stripper), while
1014 II / DISTILLATION / Extractive Distillation

Figure 1 Configuration of an ED process.

the popular LLE, using sulfolane as the solvent, 3. Less physical property restrictions. Interfacial ten-
requires four major process units, including sion and density difference between the liquid
LLE tower, extractive stripper, solvent phases are important concerns for LLE, but not for
recovery column, and rafRnate wash tower (see ED.
Figure 2).
2. Higher operational Uexibility. LLE uses only sol- The principle of ED for aromatic puriRcation was
vent selectivity (polarity) for separation, while ED studied as early as 1944. One example was the recov-
uses both solvent selectivity and boiling point for ery of toluene from parafRns using phenol as the
separation, so it has one extra dimension for op- selective solvent. The effect of phenol on a paraf-
erational Sexibility. Rn}toluene mixture is plotted in liquid}vapour

Figure 2 Configuration of liquid}liquid extraction using sulfolane for aromatic recovery.

 II / DISTILLATION / Extractive Distillation 1015

The vapour}liquid equilibria of the para-

fRn}toluene}phenol system were applied to test
a commercial ED tower for toluene puriRcation. As
shown in Figure 5, the McCabe}Thiele diagram,
drawn on a phenol-free basis, was used to carry out
the theoretical calculations from tray to tray in the
ED tower.
The calculated results were then compared with the
actual results generated from a commercial ED tower
with 2.1 m diameter and 65 trays. The hydrocarbon
feed tray and the solvent feed tray are located at trays
19 and 39 (counted from the bottom of the tower),
respectively. The tower was operated at a solvent-to-
feed ratio (S/F) of 2.5, a reSux-to-overhead ratio
(R/D) of 2.75, and reboiler temperature at 1703C
Figure 3 Effect of phenol on the vapour}liquid equilibrium of
paraffin and toulene. Numbers on curves refer to mol% solvent in under 1.3 atm bottom pressure. On the basis of the
liquid. charge, overhead and bottoms analyses, tray-to-tray
calculations were made.
Figure 6 shows the calculated concentration pro-
diagrams as shown in Figure 3, in which the parafRn Rles for each component plotted against theoretical
is considered as a hypothetical octane having the tray number. It also shows the plot of the tray ana-
same boiling point as toluene. In the absence of phe- lyses against actual tray number. The overall efRcien-
nol, there exists an azeotrope of parafRn and toluene. cies calculated over small sections of the tower are
However, at 50 mol% phenol, the azeotrope is de- given in Table 1. The average of the overall tray
stroyed and the mixture is easily separated; at efRciencies throughout the tower is about 50%.
100 mol% phenol, the separation between parafRn Based on the above principle, much more rigorous
and toluene becomes very easy. Figure 4 illustrates algorithms for tray-to-tray calculation of ED towers
the effect of phenol on the change in relative volatility for multicomponent systems have been developed in
between parafRn and toluene. Phenol causes an in-
crease of activity coefRcient for both parafRn and
toluene, but the activity coefRcient of the parafRn
increases to a greater extent than that of toluene.
Therefore, the relative volatility of parafRn over tol-
uene can be increased from 1.0 (no separation) to 3.7
(easy separation) at near zero hydrocarbon concen-
tration in phenol (inRnite dilution).

Figure 5 McCabe}Thiele diagram for paraffin and toulene sep-

Figure 4 Effect of phenol on the activity coefficient of paraffin aration in the presence of phenol. Part (B) is an enlargement of
and toluene. part of the diagram in (A).
1016 II / DISTILLATION / Extractive Distillation

Figure 6 Calculated versus actual concentration profile of the componenets in an ED tower. Key: , methylcyclohexane;
, toluene; ; phenol; ***, calculated values.

recent years, with the help of advanced vapour}liquid enough solvency to dissolve both aromatics and
equilibrium theories and high-speed computers. nonaromatics in the mixture under process condition.
In general, however, solvents with a high selectivity
Handling Two Liquid Phases in ED Towers
for compounds to be separated will have a reduced
One of the challenges of ED technology for aromatics solvency (capacity), and vice versa. The selectivity
puriRcation is the handling of the possible formation versus solvency of the common commercial solvents
of two liquid phases in the upper portion of the ED for aromatic extraction is shown in Figure 7. There-
tower where nonaromatics are concentrated. The oc- fore, in order to eliminate two liquid phases, one may
currence of a second liquid phase is due to the fact have to compromise the solvent selectivity, some-
that the nonaromatics, such as parafRns, naphthenes times to a great extent.
and oleRns, have signiRcantly lower solubility in the A better way is to cope with two liquid phases in
polar solvent than aromatics. the ED tower, without sacriRcing the solvent selectiv-
One way to solve the problem of two liquid phases ity, for the following reasons:
in the ED tower is to select a polar solvent that has
1. Two liquid phases normally reduce the solvent
selectivity in the three-phase equilibrium (va-
Table 1 Tray efficiency of ED tower for toulene purification pour}liquid}liquid) condition in the ED tower.
However, this can be compensated by intrinsic
Section of Theoretical Actual Overall selectivity of a highly selective solvent. For
tower trays trays trays efficiency example, the performance of sulfolane was
(%)

Below phenol feed tray

1}3 1.8 3 60.0
4}7 2.7 4 67.5
8}11 2.1 4 52.5
12}15 1.5 4 37.5
15}18 1.8 3 60.0
23}27 2.1 4 52.5
27}30 2.5 4 62.5
31}34 2.65 4 66.0
35}39 2.35 5 47.0

Above phenol feed tray

43}65 10.8 23 47.0
49}65 8.6 17 50.7
57}65 4.5 9 50.0
61}65 2.8 5 56.0 Figure 7 Selectivity versus solvency (solubility) of the common
commercial solvents. DEG, diethylene glycol; TEG, triethylene
All trays numbered from bottom of tower. glycol; DMS, dimethyl sulfoxide; NMP, N-methyl pyrrolidone.
 II / DISTILLATION / Extractive Distillation 1017

compared with those of N-formyl morpholine Multicomponent vapour}liquid and liquid}liquid

(NFM) and N-methyl pyrrolidone (NMP). The equilibria solutions are required for the algorithm.
ability of these solvents to enhance the relative Two activity coefRcient models, NRTL (nonrandom
volatility of n-heptane over benzene (an aromatic two liquids) and UNIQUAC (universal quasichemi-
and nonaromatic separation) in a one-stage equi- cal), are readily extendable to multicomponent sys-
librium cell was determined. Table 2 shows that, tems and capable of such solutions. Experimental
although two liquid phases were observed using activity coefRcients, , at inRnite dilution are used for
sulfolane as the solvent, sulfolane still gave a bet- calculating binary parameters for the NRTL equa-
ter performance than the other solvents where tion. These parameters are then tested using experi-
a single liquid phase existed in the mixture. mental liquid}liquid ternary data, experimental va-
2. Two liquid phases have no ill effects on the efR- pour}liquid equilibrium data, and data from pilot
ciency of small tray or packed towers with dia- plant or commercial plant. The NRTL equation is
meter from 0.08 m to 0.46 m. However, in larger used in the algorithm to calculate activity coefRcients
towers, the heavy liquid phase tends to accumulate and is given in the following equations:
on the tray if the liquid phases are not well mixed.
This problem can be eliminated by tray designs ln 1"x22[21(G21/(x1#x2G21))2
promoting gas agitation, forcing the two liquid
phases to behave as a homogeneous liquid. For #12(G12/(x2#x1G12)2]
larger packed columns, liquid}liquid redis-
tributors are specially designed to allow separate ln 2"x21[12G12/(x2#x1G12))2
distribution of the two liquid phases. #21G21/(x1#x2G21)2]
Computer simulations have been developed which
are capable of accurately predicting the development where
of two liquid phases in the ED tower. In one ln G12"!1212
approach, the simulation algorithm starts from
linearized pressure, temperature and concentration ln G21"!2121
proRles and feed conditions given by the program
operator. New estimates of composition are solved, 12"(12#S12T)/RT
using the material balance and equilibrium relation-
ship for each tray. Then the equilibrium constants are 21"(21#S21T)/RT
re-estimated and a new temperature gradient is estab-
lished to calculate a tray-by-tray energy balance. Ac- and where Gij, ij, Sij and ij are empirical constants,
cumulated errors are calculated for the energy, mater- i is activity coefRcient, R is the gas universal con-
ial and equilibrium balances. Appropriate column stant, T is absolute temperature, and xi is liquid phase
operation restraints are factored in at this point. mole fraction of component i.
A correction factor is found for the temperature, rate The simulation uses a Newton}Raphson-based
proRles, and liquid composition proRle by inverting Sash algorithm that checks for two liquid phases by
the accumulated error matrix. These correction fac- checking Gibbs free energies for components the pro-
tors are used to form new iterative estimates of com- gram operator lists as possible second liquid phase
position to start the process again until the correction formers. If two liquid phases are indeed present, regu-
factors are small enough to call the components lar solution theory provides a method of combining
converged. the liquid-phase activity coefRcients.

State-of-the-art ED Technologies
Table 2 ED solvent screening for aromatics recovery
The modern state-of-the-art ED technologies for BTX
Solvent Relative volatility Number of aromatic puriRcation are based on several solvent
(n-heptane/benzene) liquid phases
systems: sulfolane, NFM and NMP. Proprietary
Sulfolane 3.9 2 cosolvents may be blended into the base solvent to
DMSO 3.6 1 enhance the performance in speciRc applications.
NFM 3.1 1 Table 3 summarizes the key performance para-
NMP 2.6 1
meters of LLE and ED for aromatics recovery. ED
Feed: 20% n-heptane and 80% benzene; pressure 1 atm; process can provide up to 25% savings in capital
DMSO, dimethyl sulfoxide; NFM, N-formyl morpholine; NMP, investment as compared with the commercially avail-
N-methyl pyrrolidone. able LLE processes. This saving is attributable to the
1018 II / DISTILLATION / Extractive Distillation

Table 3 Comparison of aromatic recovery technologies

System UDEX TM ArosolvanTM SulfolaneTM Morphylane GT-AromexTM

Solvent Tetra-EG NMP Sulfolane N-formyl morpholine Proprietary

ISBL capital cost (million US$) 9.5 11.0 10.7 11.0 8.1

Utilities
Power (kWh per t of feed) * 6.6 2.4 4.6 4.8
Steam (kcal per kg of feed) 211 225 177 250 194
Cooling H2O (gal per lb of feed) 19 * * 16 21

Aromatics recovery
Benzene 99.9% 99.9% 99.9% 99.9% 95.0%
Toluene 99.5% 99.5% 99.0% 99.5% 99.5%
Xylene 95% 95% 95% 97% 100%

Solvent-to-feed ratio (v/v) 4:1 0.4 : 1 2:1 3:1 3:1

Data are for 1994 construction, extraction section only; all processes are pro rata for 1600 metric tons day\1 reformate feed; sources
include SRI International, Handbook of Solvent Extraction, Petroleum Refining Technologies & Economics, and licensor literature.

smaller number of operating units, as mentioned the feedstocks to the ED tower must contain only
above. The ED process recovers more xylenes but less very small amounts of critical components, such as
benzene than LLE processes. methylcyclohexane and dimethylcyclopentane in py-
The Morphylane process offered by Krupp Kop- rolysis gasoline feedstock, or C7 oleRns in reformate
pers uses NFM as the selective solvent. A schematic feedstock.
diagram of the Morphylane process is given in Fig- The Morphylane process is available in commer-
ure 8. The diagram is very similar to the general ED cial applications for recovering high purity benzene
process scheme as shown in Figure 1, except the from C6 fraction, or pure benzene and toluene from
nonaromatic vapour exiting the top of the ED tower the C6}C7 fraction of reformate or pyrolysis gasoline.
contains a small amount of NFM solvent (0.9 wt%), For example, the process has been commercially tes-
which must be recovered. Two methods are used for ted with a feedstock from a mixture of C6 reformate
this solvent recovery, both of which require addi- fraction and a C6 fraction of a pyrolysis gasoline. The
tional equipment and expense: (1) a separate solvent plant had a top-Rtted solvent recovery system. The
recovery column; and (2) additional trays or packings results are summarized in Table 4. Approximately
Rtted to the top of the ED tower (above the solvent 98% benzene recovery with 99.9% benzene purity
tray), using nonaromatics as the reSux to Sush NFM was achieved with this process. This process, how-
back into the ED tower. To use the second method, ever, has not been applied to the recovery of higher

Figure 8 Schematic diagram of the Morphylane process for aromatic purification.

 II / DISTILLATION / Extractive Distillation 1019

Table 4 ED performance for benzene recovery from the C6 and C# 9 and higher aromatics. Unlike the Mor-
fraction phylane process, the overhead nonaromatics stream
from the ED tower in the GT-BTXSM process contains
Parameter Units Value
essentially no solvent, and does not require a separate
Throughput t h\1 23.0 solvent recovery tower.
(approx. 116%) A hybrid concept of the GT-BTXSM process can be
Benzene production t h\1 12.89 used to increase substantially the capacity of the
Benzene purity wt % 99.98
liquid}liquid extraction unit and improve the quality
Benzene yield wt % 98.11
Solvent consumption g t\1 aromatics 6.0 of the benzene product, through retroRtting of the
Solvent in benzene ppm Not ascertainable existing unit. The retroRtting can be carried out using
product this hybrid concept without requiring extensive modi-
Steam consumption kg t\1 feed 564 Rcations, investment or lengthly shutdown time.
(16;105 Pa)
Figure 9 shows a new process using a hybrid of the
(including benzene
column) sulfolane liquid}liquid extraction process with the
Energy consumption for kg t\1 feed 349 GT-BTXSM process that bypasses part of the feed
extractive distillation only Gcal t\1 feed 0.161 around the original extraction section. In the hybrid
16;105 Pa steam scheme, the ED tower is better suited to purifying the
benzene-rich feed than the liquid}liquid extraction
unit, and it is not subject to the maximum aromatics
boiling aromatics, such as mixed xylenes or C# 9 and limit in the hydrocarbon charge. The ED tower
higher aromatics, probably because of the relatively nonaromatic stream (rich in cyclohexane) may be
low boiling point of NFM. recycled to the reformer unit for producing more
The GT-BTXSM process offered by GTC Techno- benzene, while the rafRnate stream from the
logy Corporation is available for recovering not only liquid}liquid extractor (rich in parafRns) could be
benzene and benzene/toluene, but also a full range of routed to gasoline blending or used as a feedstock for
aromatics (benzene, toluene and xylenes) with high naphtha cracking to produce ethylene and pyrolysis
purity and recovery. The process uses a proprietary gasoline. The major changes are modiRcations of the
sulfolane-based solvent blend. Due to the high boiling solvent system to be compatible with both extraction
point of the solvent, the process is very effective in operations and to make the appropriate tie-ins to the
recovering higher boiling aromatics, such as xylenes ED tower.

Figure 9 Hybrid scheme for aromatic recovery process expansion.

1020 II / DISTILLATION / Extractive Distillation

Cyclohexane Recovery from Naphtha Table 6 Computer simulation for solvent comparison
or Natural Gas Liquid Solvent 2,4-DMP CyC6 purity Separation
recovery (%) (wt%) factor a
In recent years, ED technology has also been applied
to the separation of parafRns and cyclopara- MIST 85.5 97.5 586
fRns, a much more difRcult separation than aromatics TEG 53.7 92.4 115
and nonaromatics. One of the major developments Sulfolane 51.7 92.1 106
NMP 45.9 91.2 84
was cyclohexane recovery from naphtha or natural
EGb 0.0 85.0 0
gas liquid (NGL) streams. Cyclohexane, an important
raw material for the nylon industry, exists naturally a
Separation factor
in naphtha and NGL streams. However, recovery of mole fraction 2,4-DMP raffinate/mole fraction CyC6 raffinate
" .
high purity cyclohexane from naphtha or NGL mole fraction 2,4-DMP extract/mole fraction CyC6 extract
b
through conventional distillation is virtually imposs- Simulation failed to converge.
Premises: 99% CyC6 recovery, overhead product allowed to vary;
ible, owing to the close-boiling C7 isomers
S/F weight ratio"16; 25 equilibrium stages (solvent fed on stage
in the streams. Since the polarity difference between 24, hydrocarbon fed on stage 12); reflux fixed at 0.48 (hydrocar-
cyclohexane and C7 isomers is substantially smaller bon feed).
than that for aromatic and nonaromatic compounds,
no extractive solvent has been found that can effect
the separation. However, through the use of a cosol-
vent (to enhance the solvency of the mixed solvent), VLE cell for the mixed and single solvents shown in
an ED process has been commercialized to recover Table 5. These simulations were based on experi-
high purity cyclohexane directly from an NGL frac- mental physical property data, such as the inRnite
tion containing 85% cyclohexane. dilution activity coefRcients of binary solvent}
Many solvent blends show synergistic improve- hydrocarbon mixtures. Again, NRTL thermodyn-
ment over what would be expected by pure compon- amic correlations were used to predict the occurrence
ent mixing. To test the concept, experiments were of two liquid phases and a Newton}Raphson
conducted in a one-stage vapour}liquid equilibrium convergence method was used to carry out the simu-
(VLE) cell to compare the selectivity of Rve solvents. lations.
To a hydrocarbon mixture of 85 wt% cyclohexane Simulations of a ED process separating an
(CyC6) and 15 wt% 2,3 dimethylpentane (2,3-DMP), 85/15 wt% CyC6/2,4-DMP mixture were made to
a selective solvent or a mixed solvent was added, at compare the MIST solvent with four common extrac-
a solvent-to-feed ratio (S/F) of 7.0. The relative vola- tion solvents, ethylene (EG), triethylene glycol (TEG),
tility of 2,3-DMP over CyC6 was measured in the sulfolane and N-methyl pyrrolidone (NMP). The
equilibrium cell with various solvents. Table 5 pres- simulations were for a 25 theoretical stage ED tower
ents a comparison of relative volatilities obtained for at a S/F ratio of 16. The CyC6 recovery in the extract
Rve solvents tested, including a proprietary mixed stream was speciRed at 99.0% and the overhead
solvent (MIST) from Phillips Petroleum Company. rafRnate product was allowed to vary. Table 6 shows
MIST solvent, discovered by investigating the combi- that the MIST solvent has a separation factor 5 times
nations of many other solvents, has a signiRcantly greater than TEG, which has the highest separation
higher relative volatility than the other single factor of the single solvents.
solvents. The MIST solvent was Rrst tested in a 150 mm
Computer simulations were carried out to conRrm diameter ED pilot plant using as the feedstock a re-
the results on solvent screening from the one-stage Rnery stream that had an average composition as
shown in Table 7. Based on the successful pilot plant
study, a commercial plant purifying 100 metric
Table 5 Equilibrium cell study for CyC6 and 2,3-DMP separation tonnes per day cyclohexane was designed, construc-
ted and commissioned in 1991.
Solvent No. of liquid phases Relative volatility
(2,3-DMP/CyC6)

(No solvent) 1 0.84 Light Ole\n and Paraf\n

EG 2 1.02
TEG 2 1.06
Separations
Sulfolane 2 1.07 The synthetic rubber process, brought to a successful
NMP 1 1.07
MIST 1 1.22
culmination during World War II, required large
quantities of butadiene; consequently normal
 II / DISTILLATION / Extractive Distillation 1021

Table 7 Average ED pilot plant feedstock withdrawn from the bottom of this section together
with hydrocarbon bottoms. The solvent and bottoms
Components wt% are separated in a smaller 20-tray stripper tower,
Cyclohexane 89.1 the solvent-free bottoms being removed as overhead
2,2-Dimethylpentane 1.3 and stripped solvent circulated back to the ED
2,4-Dimethylpentane 4.0 tower. Hydrocarbon feed is charged at some
3,3-Dimethylpentane 0.1 point below the solvent feed, near the bottom of the
2,3-Dimethylpentane 0.9
Rrst section or top of the second section of the ED
2-Methylhexane 1.6
3-Methylhexane 1.1 tower.
2,2,3-Trimethylbutane 0.8 For n-butane and 2-butene separation, the purity of
Dimethylcyclopentanes 1.0 2-butene was 94.6 vol% with only 39.4 vol% recov-
n-Heptane 0.1 ery. For mixed butanes and mixed butenes separ-
ation, the purity of mixed butenes was 88.7 vol%
with 96.7 vol% recovery, and for butadiene and
butenes separation, the purity of butadiene was
butenes, the feedstock to butadiene units, were also in 96.9 vol% with 89.7 vol% recovery. Obviously,
great demand. ED process technology was developed these results did not meet the industrial require-
to recover high purity n-butenes suitable for pro- ments for producing high purity product with high
ducing butadiene to feed the synthetic rubber process. recovery.
In this case, the selective solvent, developed by Further studies were carried out to screen solvents
Shell Development Company in Houston, Texas, for oleRn and parafRn separations. For example,
USA, was a mixture of 85% acetone and 15% a comprehensive solvent screening study was conduc-
water. ted for n-butane and butene-2 separations. Eighty
Later, furfural was used as an ED solvent for separ- solvents were evaluated, including ester-type solvents
ating isobutane from butene-1, n-butane from bu- containing hydroxyl groups, aldehyde groups, amine
tene-2, and butene-1 from butadiene. As shown in groups, nitrile groups, nitro groups, ketone groups,
Figure 10, furfural was tested in an ED tower consist- nitrogen; ether-type solvents; and miscellaneous sol-
ing of two 50-tray sections in series for separating vents. It was found that aniline and furfural were the
butene-2 from n-butane. Solvent was charged to most selective solvents. The VLE data for n-butane
a tray, which was several trays from the top of the and 2-butenes in furfural and aniline solvents are
Rrst section (A), and Sowed to the bottom of this given in Figures 11 and 12. Although N-formyl mor-
section. It was pumped together with dissolved hy- pholine was also tested among the nitrogen-contain-
drocarbons to the top of the second section (B), and ing solvents for n-butane and 2-butenes separation,

Figure 10 Schematic ED process diagram for separating 2-butene and n-butane.

1022 II / DISTILLATION / Extractive Distillation

achieved:
1-Butene 95.6%
2-Butene 99.1%
Butanes 98.9%

The purity of 1-butene and 2-butene products can be

99.6% and 95.9%, respectively.

Conclusions
Since the 1940s, ED technology has gone through
extensive development for solving many difRcult sep-
aration problems in the petroleum and petrochemical
industries. The development in cosolvent selection
Figure 11 Vapour}liquid equilibrium of n-butane and 2-butene
in Furfural. Solvent dosage: , 3.7; , 4.5. Pressure, tailored for a speciRc separation and the advancement
3862 mmHg. in tower internal design have made ED a competitive
process. In many cases, ED processes can be more
efRcient and economical than conventional LLE
in terms of capital investment, energy consumption
and ease of operation. It is anticipated that the ED
for unknown reasons the solvent was not considered
technology will be selected more frequently in the
for commercialization until recently.
future for the petroleum and petrochemical
Krupp Koppers has offered the BUTUNEX pro-
industries.
cess, an ED process using N-formyl morpholine as the
selective solvent, for recovering 1-butene and 2-bu- See also: II/Distillation: Theory of Distillation. III/React-
tene from C4 hydrocarbon streams. On the basis of ive Distillation.
such a feedstock with the composition of 25.6%
isobutane, 32.7% n-butane, 26.6% 1-butene and
15.1% 2-butene, the following yields can be
Further Reading
Benedict M and Rubin LC (1945) Extractive and azeotropic
distillation: I. Theoretical aspect. Transactions of the
American Institution of Chemical Engineers 41:
353d370.
Brown RE and Lee FM (1991) Way to purity cyclohexane.
Hydrocarbon Processing May: 83d86.
Doherty MF and Knapp JP (1993) Distillation, azotropic
and extractive. In: Kirk}Othmer Encyclopedia of Chem-
ical Technology, 4th edn, vol. 8, pp. 358d398. New
York: John Wiley and Sons.
Drickamer HG and Hummel HH (1945) Application of
experimental vapor}liquid equilibria to an analysis
of the operation of a commercial unit for the
puriRcation of toluene from petroleum. Transactions of
the American Institute of Chemical Engineers 41:
607d629.
Gentry JC and Kumar CS (1998) Improve BTX Process-
ing Economics. Hydrocarbon Processing (March):
69}74.
Lee FM and Gentry JC (1997) Dont overlook extractive
Figure 12 Vapour}liquid equilibrium of n-butane and 2-butene distillation. Chemical Engineering Progress 93 (10):
in aniline. Solvent dosage, 5.0; pressure, 3862 mmHg. 56}64.