Material Separation Agent
The addition of a Material Separation Agent, such as benzene to an ethanol/water mixture, changes the molecular interactions and eliminates the azeotrope. Added in the liquid phase, the new component can alter the activity coefficient of various compounds in different ways thus altering a mixture's relative volatility. Greater deviations from Raoult's law make it easier to have significant changes in relative volatility with the addition of another component. In azeotropic distillation the volatility of the added component is the same as the mixture, and a new azeotrope is formed with one or more of the components based on differences in polarity. If the material separation agent is selected to form azeotropes with more than one component in the feed then it is referred to as an entrainer. The added entrainer should be recovered by distillation, decantation, or another separation method and returned near the top of the original column.
Read more about this topic: Azeotropic Distillation
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