Improvement of the system for screening potential entrainers in azeotropic distillation processes - Extension to the case that part of azeotropic data in the ternary mixture are unavailable

Screening potential entrainers that make separation feasible is very difficult in the development of azeotropic distillation processes. A system developed in a past paper present entrainers satisfying the necessary conditions to make separation feasible via azeotropic distillation and the corresponding feasible process configurations obtained from them. However, in the ternary mixture (X + Y + S) constituting of a binary mixture (X + Y) to be separated and an additional material (S), the system required that data for a ternary azeotrope (X -Y -S) and three of binary azeotropes (X-Y, X-S, Y-S) should be available from an azeotropic database. The system was improved to determine whether the material (S) become a candidate for entrainer even if part of the data for X - Y - S, X - Y, X - S, and Y - S are unavailable from an azeotropic database. Original is an abstract.