2- Butanol, ternary azeotropes with

Qurishi et al., Ladisch, and Phillips and Humphrey discuss some of the issues concerning the separation of the fermenter products. Doherty and Malone" indicate that a two-column distillation system in conjunction with a decanter can be used to separate the heterogeneous binary n-butanol-water azeotrope. Sticklmair and Faii discuss the separation of the ternary acetone-water-n-butanol system in a two-column system. Pucci et al. suggest that the ternary separation can be achieved in a single column in which a side decanter is used to remove the water. 

Such a process depends upon the difference in departure from ideally between the solvent and the components of the binary mixture to be separated. In the example given, both toluene and isooctane separately form nonideal liquid solutions with phenol, but the extent of the nonideality with isooctane is greater than that with toluene. When all three substances are present, therefore, the toluene and isooctane themselves behave as a nonideal mixture and then-relative volatility becomes high. Considerations of this sort form the basis for the choice of an extractive-distillation solvent. If, for example, a mixture of acetone (bp = 56.4 C) and methanol (bp = 64.7°Q, which form a binary azeotrope, were to be separated by extractive distillation, a suitable solvent could probably be chosen from the group of aliphatic alcohols. Butanol (bp = 117.8 Q, since it is a member of the same homologous series but not far removed, forms substantially ideal solutions with methanol, which are themselves readily separated. It will form solutions of positive deviation from ideality with acetone, however, and the acetone-methanol vapor-liquid equilibria will therefore be substantially altered in ternary mixtures. If butanol forms no azeotrope with acetone, and if it alters the vapor-liquid equilibrium of acetone-methanol sufficiently to destroy the azeotrope in this system, it will serve as an extractive-distillation solvent. When both substances of the binary mixture to be separated are themselves chemically very similar, a solvent of an entirely different chemical nature will be necessary. Acetone and furfural, for example, are useful as extractive-distillation solvents for separating the hydrocarbons butene-2 and a-butane. 

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