Breaking Azeotropes and Absorption Tricks

In many mixtures (binary, ternary, etc.), we encounter azeotropes. In this water-isopropanol system, the azeotrope is clear to discern and we might be able to use pressure swing distillation effectively.
  • In multi-stage absorbtion, we have an operating line of the following form. LxA,i1xA,i+VyA,j+11yA,j+1=LxA,j1xA,j+VyA,i+11yA,i+1
  • We also have some equilibrium data, which at typical absorber concentrations can described by Henry's law \begin{align*} y = \mathcal{H} x \end{align*}
  • The solution of these equations is just the same as for multi-stage distillation. We draw the operating line and the equilibrium line and step between the two.
Breaking Azeotropes and Absorption Tricks