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Volume 13
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10.3390/separations13020048
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This is an early access version, the complete PDF, HTML, and XML versions will be available soon.
Article

Comparison of Dynamic Controllability of Extractive Distillation and Pressure-Swing Distillation for the Separation of Dimethyl Carbonate/Methanol Azeotrope

by
Jiancai Sui
1,2,
Yang Liu
3,
Zhenhua Wang
2,
Tao Li
2,*,
Kun-Yu Gao
3,
Jin-Ke Chu
3,
Yang-Guang Zhang
3,
Hui Shi
4,
Jihai Tang
3,5 and
Ming Xia
3,*
1
Shandong Energy Group Co., Ltd., Jinan 250101, China
2
National Engineering Research Center of Coal Gasification and Coal-Based Advanced Materials, Jinan 250101, China
3
State Key Laboratory of Materials-Oriented Chemical Engineering, College of Chemical Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 211816, China
4
School of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 211816, China
5
Jiangsu National Synergetic Innovation Center for Advanced Materials (SICAM), Nanjing 211800, China
*
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Separations 2026, 13(2), 48; https://doi.org/10.3390/separations13020048
Submission received: 25 December 2025 / Revised: 21 January 2026 / Accepted: 22 January 2026 / Published: 27 January 2026
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Separation Technology in Chemical Engineering)
Versions Notes

Abstract

Dimethyl carbonate (DMC) and methanol (MeOH) form a binary minimum-boiling homogeneous azeotrope, and thus conventional distillation cannot achieve complete separation. The extractive distillation (ED) with o-xylene as a heavy entrainer in our recent work possesses significant energy saving and achieves a high purity of 99.9% DMC compared with the pressure-swing distillation (PSD). For a fair comparison, both ED and PSD were evaluated against the same minimum product specifications (DMC ≥ 99.5 wt% and MeOH ≥ 98.0 wt%), noting that the recovered MeOH stream was recycled to the reactive distillation column rather than treated as a final product. However, the dynamic performance of this ED is still unclear, and all the benefits of the ED are reasonable only under good dynamic controllability. In this work, the dynamic controllability of the ED process was compared with that of the PSD one. Both processes were evaluated under a unified temperature-control philosophy, including conventional fixed R. Closed-loop dynamic simulations were performed under ±10% step disturbances in feed flowrate and composition. It was revealed that under the tested disturbances, DMC purity was maintained close to the high-purity target (≈99.9 wt%) in the ED process, whereas larger deviations and a lower attainable DMC purity were obtained in PSD. The results provide a control-oriented basis for the selection and further development of special distillation schemes for MeOH/DMC azeotropic separation.
Keywords: dimethyl carbonate/methanol separation; extractive distillation; pressure-swing distillation; dynamic simulation dimethyl carbonate/methanol separation; extractive distillation; pressure-swing distillation; dynamic simulation

Share and Cite

MDPI and ACS Style

Sui, J.; Liu, Y.; Wang, Z.; Li, T.; Gao, K.-Y.; Chu, J.-K.; Zhang, Y.-G.; Shi, H.; Tang, J.; Xia, M. Comparison of Dynamic Controllability of Extractive Distillation and Pressure-Swing Distillation for the Separation of Dimethyl Carbonate/Methanol Azeotrope. Separations 2026, 13, 48. https://doi.org/10.3390/separations13020048

AMA Style

Sui J, Liu Y, Wang Z, Li T, Gao K-Y, Chu J-K, Zhang Y-G, Shi H, Tang J, Xia M. Comparison of Dynamic Controllability of Extractive Distillation and Pressure-Swing Distillation for the Separation of Dimethyl Carbonate/Methanol Azeotrope. Separations. 2026; 13(2):48. https://doi.org/10.3390/separations13020048

Chicago/Turabian Style

Sui, Jiancai, Yang Liu, Zhenhua Wang, Tao Li, Kun-Yu Gao, Jin-Ke Chu, Yang-Guang Zhang, Hui Shi, Jihai Tang, and Ming Xia. 2026. "Comparison of Dynamic Controllability of Extractive Distillation and Pressure-Swing Distillation for the Separation of Dimethyl Carbonate/Methanol Azeotrope" Separations 13, no. 2: 48. https://doi.org/10.3390/separations13020048

APA Style

Sui, J., Liu, Y., Wang, Z., Li, T., Gao, K.-Y., Chu, J.-K., Zhang, Y.-G., Shi, H., Tang, J., & Xia, M. (2026). Comparison of Dynamic Controllability of Extractive Distillation and Pressure-Swing Distillation for the Separation of Dimethyl Carbonate/Methanol Azeotrope. Separations, 13(2), 48. https://doi.org/10.3390/separations13020048

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