| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 201695 | Fluid Phase Equilibria | 2015 | 9 Pages |
•NMP and ionic liquid (IL) mixture were proposed for the separation of benzene and thiophene by extractive distillation.•Isobaric VLE data were measured for benzene and thiophene system using NMP and NMP + IL mixture as entrainers.•UNIFAC model was extended to benzene–thiophene–NMP and benzene–thiophene–NMP–IL systems.
In this study, a mixture of N-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone (NMP) and ionic liquid (IL) was proposed as the entrainer for the separation of benzene and thiophene by extractive distillation. [EMIM]+[BF4]− might be a suitable IL for investigating the selectivity and capacity together using the COSMO-RS model. The experimental vapor–liquid equilibrium (VLE) results indicated that the addition of IL did not obviously improve the relative volatility of benzene to thiophene; however, the content of NMP in the vapor phase could be significantly reduced using the combination of NMP and [EMIM]+[BF4]− in comparison to the benchmark solvent NMP. Moreover, the UNIFAC model was extended and the corresponding interaction parameters were obtained by correlating the ternary (benzene + thiophene + NMP) and quaternary (benzene + thiophene + NMP + [EMIM]+[BF4]−) VLE equilibrium data obtained in this work at ambient pressure.
