Our Accomplishment

Graph for the Gas Chromatography (GC)

The Distillation Column on its way to reaching Steady State

The Distillation Column at Steady State

Gas Chromatography (GC)

The status of the Distillation Column when we restarted it

The status of the Distillation column when we 'failed' the column due to the high feed rate

Pumping out the ethanol from the bottom product receiver

Pumping out water from the top product receiver

Presentation Slides

Our Mission (Part 2)

Questions:

1) Overall Efficiency under Total Reflux Conditions
Operate the columnunder the conditions as described in the project manual.
i. Calculate the overall efficiency of the column. The calculation procedures are explained in the project manual.

2) Effect of Reflux Ratios on the Separation

Operate the column under normal operating conditions, i.e. with a finite feed and product flow rates as described in the project manual. You are expected to operate the column under two different reflux ratios. Plot the distribution of temperature along the column.

Our Mission (Part 1)

Outcome of Project

To learn how to control the parts of the entire distillation column and also, what settings to set to enable the set up to hit constant rate, which is the most ideal graph that we would like to see.

Overview of Project

Focus/Objectives of the Project: 
Distillation is one of the most crucial industrial processes to separate different chemical components in a liquid mixture. Continuous distillation is designed to obtain moderately pure components, of which boiling points are different.

1. To investigate the steady state of distillation of a binary mixture under continuous operation.

2. To investigate the effect of reflux ratio on the performance of distillation columns.

3. To measure the chemical composition using a gas chromatography (GC)

4. To operate the distillation column based on product requirement.

Our Team :)

From left to right : Tan Ying Jie (Student Supervisor), Goh Chin Fan (S2-07), Tan Kein Shuen (S2-03), Jonathan Phang (S2-06) , Ilya Haider (S2-04), Prof Raymond (Project Advisor), Mitchel Goh (S2-04), Cheng Hao En (S2-02), Koh Wei Jia (Student Supervisor)

Our Mission (Part 1)

What does the group need to accomplish at the end of the workshop?

Overview of Project

This project involves us to use distillation as a method to separate the Ethanol/Water solution to the wanted purity. The picture on the left shows the distillation unit used by us to separate the Ethanol/Water solution. The solution was poured into the feed tank which had a tube connected to the heat exchanger. The solution was pumped into the heat exchanger by a feed pump and it was then transferred to the columns.The solution was then boiled and the lower boiling point solution (Ethanol) was converted to its gaseous form and was then to the condenser, which then went back to liquid state in to the top product receiver. The condenser was using room temperature water to cool the gaseous substance. The bottom product receiver received the product which was mostly water. Both the top and bottom product receiver contained mostly Ethanol and mostly Water solution respectively.