Towards sustainable separation and recovery of dichloromethane and methanol azeotropic mixture through process design, control, and intensification

Abstract Background Here we analysed the possibility of improving the sustainability performance for the recovery of dichloromethane and methanol from a binary azeotropic mixture using different energy‐intensified extractive distillation‐based processes: side‐stream extractive distillation (SSED), thermally coupled extractive distillation (TCED), and extractive dividing wall column (EDWC). The sustainability performance of the different processes was analysed based on three main factors: total annual cost (TAC), CO 2 emissions, and condition number. Results The EDWC was found to give the best improvement in terms of TAC and CO 2 emissions by about 18% and 21%, relative to conventional extractive distillation (CED). These however were traded‐off by the increase in conditional number (CN) by 186 times, signifying a complex dynamic characteristic for the EDWC. Thus, the SSED was suggested as an alternative sustainable option as it also provides significant improvement in TAC and CO 2 emissions by about 11%, and 18% with respect to the CED, whilst providing the least reduction in operational controllability, as evidenced by the marginal increase in the CN of about 1.5 times. We also investigated the dynamic performance of the SSED and found that the SSED provides identical dynamic performance in handling both ±10% throughput and ±5% feed composition disturbances as those of the CED. Conclusion Among the different processes, SSED is the best sustainable alternative that provides compromised steady‐state (i.e. TAC and CO 2 emissions) and dynamic (i.e. control) performance for the recovery of dichloromethane and methanol. © 2022 Society of Chemical Industry (SCI).