What is the reason for the consistently high pH level in the methanol-water separation tower?
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For low-methanol production, the Dalian University of Technology process is used. The wash water from the exhaust gas washing tower is pumped, via a wastewater heat exchanger, into the methanol-water separation tower. The wastewater from this tower is then discharged from the system through another wastewater heat exchanger; the pH of this wastewater remains very close to 9. Previously, a certain amount of alkali was added to the exhaust gas washing tower to adjust the pH, but lately, even a small addition of alkali still results in a high pH level, and the reason for this is unknown
Go straight to your supplier to resolve the issue. For a company like ours, the distillation towers supplied must come with support for subsequent maintenance and technical guidance; especially when problems arise on site, technicians need to be dispatched immediately to resolve them
This post was last edited by qugd on 2020-11-6 at 11:06. It is suggested that the original poster conduct a composition analysis of the water sample; I believe the high pH value is due to a high methanol content in the sample, and the addition of alkali causes significant deviations in the pH measurement. It can be concluded with certainty that there is a considerable amount of methanol in your sample. You determine the acidity or alkalinity of water samples by measuring their acid value and alkali value, and then compare these values with those obtained from a pH meter in order to redefine the range of acidity or alkalinity for the measured values. Let me tell you a basic chemical concept: in media that are not purely aqueous, pH 7 does not necessarily indicate neutrality, as the presence of non-aqueous solvents means that the autoionization of water does not take place at pH 7 as a boundary point.