Adriel Sosa

In an attempt to evaluate the separation of certain impurities that arise in some stages of the production of cyclohexanone, this work analyzed the possibility of removing five of these substances via rectification. Due to the scarcity of experimental vapor–liquid equilibrium data for most of the solutions in the effluent of the global process, prior knowledge of their behavior is required. In this work, two predictive models, UNIFAC and COSMO-RS, were used to determine a priori the possibility of obtaining, by distillation, the individual components of seven of the binaries formed by the combination of these five compounds. Since both procedures described quasi-ideal behavior for all the chosen solutions, the results are considered as an approximation, owing to the special nature of the studied systems. The results and characteristics of each system are discussed separately.

This work provides density data (~1300 values) of 14 alcohols with up to five carbon atoms at p ∈ [0.1–40] MPa and T ∈ [278–358] K. The information obtained is modeled with a convenient reformulation of the Tait equation from which the volumetric coefficients, α and β, are derived both analytically and numerically. The general EoS containing α and β is also used for checking the consistency of the hypothesis on the invariability of the cited thermophysic parameters. The results obtained can be considered reliable because of the low estimated errors between the experimental data and those of the literature, which are below 0.4% for volume, while for the volumetric coefficients there is always a reference diverging 10%, or less, from the proposed model estimations. By including the averages of α and β into the general state of equation the errors increase, being <15%, compared to those based on the Tait equation. Hence, the assumption on the stability of the volumetric coefficients in this working interval is sufficient to make rough estimations of the molar volume of the selected alcohols.