Methyl Ethyl Ketone → Diisopropyl Ether

Two of the most commonly used solvents in the chemical industry are isopropyl ether and methyl ethyl ketone. Normally mixtures of solvents are recovered by fractionation in a multiplate rectification column and the ease of separation depends upon the difference in boiling points of the compounds to be separated. However isopropyl ether, b.p.=68.3° C. and methyl ethyl ketone, b.p.=79.6° C. form a minimum azeotrope boiling at 65° C. at one Atm. pressure and containing 87.6 wt.% isopropyl ether, 12.4 wt.% methyl ethyl ketone. It is therefore impossible to produce pure isopropyl ether from isopropyl ether-methyl ethyl ketone mixtures by rectification because the lower boiling azeotrope will always come off overhead as the initial product. Any mixture of isopropyl ether and methyl ethyl ketone subjected to rectification at one atmosphere pressure will produce an overhead product boiling at 65° C. and containing 87.6 wt.% isopropyl ether, 12.4 wt.% methyl ethyl ketone. Extractive distillation would be an attractive method of effecting the separation of isopropyl ether from methyl ethyl ketone if agents can be found that (1) will break the isopropyl ether-methyl ethyl ketone azeotrope and (2) are easy to recover from the methyl ethyl ketone, that is, form no azeotrope with methyl ethyl ketone and boil sufficiently above methyl ethyl ketone to make the separation by rectification possible with only a few theoretical plates.

ORD record

ord-73d30ada61d8421ab3c2d2c37cf75683

Source dataset

uspto-grants-1984_07

DOI

10.6084/m9.figshare.5104873.v1

Patent number

US04459178