What methods can be used to separate and purify a mixture of methanol, ethanol, acetonitrile, and toluene?
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What methods can be used to separate and purify a mixture of methanol, ethanol, acetonitrile, and toluene?
Required processing volume? Concentrations of each component? What separation result is to be achieved?
Among the 4 components of the mixture of methanol, ethanol, acetonitrile, and toluene, except that methanol and ethanol do not form an azeotrope, azeotropes can be formed among all the other components. Moreover, the azeotopic points of some azeotropes differ by only a few tenths of a degree; for example, the azeotopic point of methanol/acetonitrile differs from that of methanol/toluene by less than 0.3 degrees. Therefore, separation cannot be achieved through distillation.
From a systematic perspective, the more mature and industrially feasible technology is multi-column distillation.