Measurement and correlation of the vapor-liquid equilibria related to the extraction of phenols from tar with mono-ethanolamine

Extracting phenol from coal tar has great economic significance. In this paper, a process for separating phenol from coal tar using mono-ethanolamine (MEA) as extractant was proposed, the conceptual design and optimized of the process was carried out by using Aspen Plus software. To ensure the accuracy of simulation, the vapor-liquid equilibrium data of MEA + phenol binary system were measured under different pressures. The binary interaction parameters of NRTL model, Wilson model and UNIQUAC model were fitted with the experimental data by data regression system. The results show that the deviation of NRTL model is less than that of Wilson model and UNIQUAC model. Considering that the boiling point difference between MEA and phenol is only 10°, two energy-saving schemes of double effect distillation are introduced into the conceptual process proposed in this paper, which can save 20% and 44.8% respectively compared with the traditional single tower distillation process . This paper provides reference for the industrial application of MEA in the extraction of phenol from coal tar.