Marcos Larriba, Pablo Navarro, Noemí DelgadoMellado, Carlos González, Julián García,
*
and Francisco Rodríguez.
Dept. of Chemical Engineering, Complutense University of Madrid, E–28040 Madrid, Spain.
!
The pyrolysis gasoline is the main source of benzene, toluene, and xylenes. The
dearomatization of this stream is currently performed by liquidliquid extraction using
sulfolane. However, the Sulfolane process has high operating costs that could be minimized
by employing ionic liquids (ILs) as solvents because of their nonvolatile character. In this
work, we proposed a novel process to perform the dearomatization of pyrolysis gasoline using
a binary mixture of 1ethyl3methylimidazolium tricyanomethanide ([emim][TCM]) and 1
ethyl4methylpyridinium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide ([4empy][Tf
2
N]) ILs. The
composition in the IL mixture was optimized considering their extractive and thermophysical
properties. The Kremser method was applied using the experimental data to determine the
number of equilibrium stages in the liquidliquid extractor which provides the same
extraction yields of aromatics using the IL mixture that those of the Sulfolane process. The
recovery section was designed and simulated from the experimental vaporliquid equilibrium
between the hydrocarbons and the IL mixture.
" #$ Separations: Materials, Devices and Processes.
% & aromatic/aliphatic separation, ionic liquids, liquid–liquid extraction, vapor
liquid separation, simulation
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 91 394 51 19; Fax: +34 91 394 42 43. E–mail address: jgarcia@quim.ucm.es
(Julián García).
Separations: Materials, Devices and Processes AIChE Journal
DOI 10.1002/aic.15735
This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been
through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process which may lead to
differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as
doi: 10.1002/aic.15735
© 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE)
Received: Feb 02, 2017; Revised: Feb 28, 2017; Accepted: Mar 24, 2017
This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.