Distillation design and optimization of quaternary azeotropic mixtures for waste solvent recovery

Pressure Swing-Based Reactive Distillation and Dividing Wall Column for Improving Manufacture of Propylene Glycol Monomethyl Ether Acetate

“…To identify the feasible separation region, all product lines must lie on a straight line through the feed location point. To further clarify the feasible separation region, the residue curve must pass through the feed composition point along the product line [3]. For ternary MeAc + MeOH + PGME, the top and bottom product compositions were estimated based on the lever rule position for preferred separation [27] as shown in Figure 5.…”

“…Alternatively, a semi-iterative method that combines manual and automatic optimization can be used. The semi-iterative method finds the minimal value one variable that affects the operation cost between a lower bound (lb) and upper bound (ub) while iterating other variables that affect the capital cost, in order to find the optimum total annual cost (TAC) [3,5]. The reflux ratio (RR) is employed in the Aspen Plus design specification, which automatically finds the minimal solution of RR between the lb and ub while continually satisfying the PGMEA yield.…”

“…As one of the largest industries in the world undergoing rapid development, the semiconductor and display-material manufacturing industry requires ultra-high purity PGMEA with ultra-low acidity to satisfy the extremely tight specifications of semiconductor processing [1]. PGMEA is a crucial solvent for photoresist processing [2,3] owing to its excellent physical and chemical properties [4]. PGMEA is traditionally produced by the esterification of propylene glycol monomethyl ether (PGME) with acetic acid (AA) using a batch reactor [5].…”

Reactive Pressure-Swing Distillation toward Sustainable Process of Novel Continuous Ultra-High-Purity Electronic-Grade Propylene Glycol Monomethyl Ether Acetate Manufacture

“…Near-optimum conditions for simple distillation can be achieved by adjusting the reflux ratio (RR) to relatively 1.2–1.5 times the RR minimum (RRm) using a shortcut column application. For this design, RR = 1.3 × RRm . The distillation recovered pure PGME from the bottom product, while the top product was pure MeOH, which was recycled in the PGME synthesis reactor as the main reactant.…”

“…These products rely on solvents for substrate deposition/removal and wafer drying, which increase solvent demand . Propylene glycol monomethyl ether acetate (PGMEA) is one of the important solvents used for photoresist processing in the semiconductor industry. , PGMEA is a multipurpose solvent with wide industrial applications because of its high dissolution capacity, excellent thermal stability, and low toxicity and causticity. , The natural existence of the PGMEA molecule in both ether bonds and carbonyl groups and its excellent properties make it an ideal industrial semiconductor solvent for dissolving polar and nonpolar substances. The manufacture of electronic-grade PGMEA with ultra-high-purity and extremely low acidity is essential owing to the extremely stringent criteria for high-yield semiconductor processing.…”