Smart Computing- Book ISBN- 978-81-953658-1-4

Authors:-Sudhanshu Singh, Shivendu Saxena

Abstract :-The distillation process is a very useful mass transfer operation in different industries like food, chemical, and petrochemical. This research work is focused on the experimental comparison between the performance of the batch distillation module to the microchannels based distillation module based on separation and product purity. A stainless-steel, Y-junction microchannel, of hydraulic diameter 0.85 mm having dimension 90mm X 1mm X 0.75mm (LX W X D) has been fabricated through mechanical engraving technique. A binary mixture of 50% w/w of acetic acid + n-hexane was used as a test sample in the batch and micro-distillation module. The effect of resistance time, system temperature on distillation efficiency, and mole fraction in both the systems have been compared. The maximum separation and purity have been observed in the microchannel distillation module for the same residence time. Experimentally, the mole fraction of n-hexane in distillate product has been observed as 0.9652 for distillate and 0.18 for bottoms in microchannels-based distillation while in batch distillation it was observed in 0.81 to 0.36 of n-hexane mole fraction in distillate and bottom product, respectively.

Keywords: - Microchannel; Separation; Y-junction; Distillation; Residence time