Vapor–liquid equilibrium of the (water + ethanol + glycerol) system: Experimental and modelling data at normal pressure

•There is a lack in literature of experimental data of ethanol–water–glycerol system.•Phase equilibrium knowledge is essential for the project of separation processes.•The use of glycerol may suggest an important integrated biorrefinery concept.•Ethanol–water azeotrope was broken even using glycerol/feed ratio.•Low standard deviations were obtained in ethanol–water–glycerol system VLE data.

In this work, vapor-liquid equilibrium data of the ethanol–water–glycerol system were measured in an Othmer-type ebulliometer at normal pressure. The choice for this system was due to the importance of the ethanol–water separation. The samples analyses were done in a digital densimeter, and the methodology was previously validated with data available in the literature. Since the mean relative deviation was less than 5% in temperature and vapor composition, new data from mixtures of ethanol–water–glycerol were obtained. The experiments showed that glycerol is a promising solvent to ethanol dehydration since it eliminates the azeotrope and promotes the production of anhydrous ethanol. A thermodynamic model for this system was developed using the NRTL model to describe the non-ideality of the liquid phase. The modeling results were compared with experimental data and the deviations were lower than 7%. In this way, the model developed in this work can be used for simulation of ethanol dehydration.