Aspen Plus V8.

0 is used to compare among those three thermodynamics models of ethylene

oxide so that it can be used in the subsequent section to determine the number of actual and
minimum stages in the distillation column.

Txy of ETHYL-01 NTRTL-LIQ

380 NRTL-VAP
UNIFAC-LIQ
370 UNIFAC-VAP
WILSON-LIQ
360
WILSON-VAP
Temperature (K)

350 EXP DATA - LIQ

EXP DATA - VAP
340
330
320
310
300
290
280
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
Liquid/ Vapour Fraction of Ethylene Oxide

Graph 1: Graph of Txy of ethylene oxide for NRTL, Wilson and UNIFAC Model.

First of all, ethylene oxide and water were chosen as the binary mixture involved. The
thermodynamics model such as Wilson, NRTL and UNIFAC are compared based on the graph
plotted with liquid and vapour fraction of ethylene oxide at varying temperature with the
experimental data under isobaric condition. The experimental data is plotted on the same graph
by obtaining data via “NIST’ ThermoData engine. Since the temperature for ‘Binary VLE 007’
under isobaric condition is in Kelvin thus the data is extracted from Aspen and using Microsoft
Excel to plot the curves for comparison of the three models with the experimental data. The
curve which near to the experimental data will be chosen and employed in the subsequent
section.

USE UR TXY DIAGRAM FOR THIS

Based on Graph 1 plotted, we noticed that Wilson model has the possible nearest value to the
experimental value which is then only followed by the NRTL and UNIFAC models. Therefore,
UNIFAC thermodynamics model (grey colour) is the furthest and obviously can be seen
deviating from the experimental value in comparison to the other 2 model. There are some
limitations and weaknesses that contributed to this exclusion. Firstly, poor results were
obtained for infinite dilution activity coefficients, excess enthalpies (hE) as well as systems
with compounds very different in size as we could see in our study. [1] Not only that but poor
results were obtained mainly because the systems were comprised with compounds which are
very different in size. This is a clear justification because the UNIFAC model was derived for
compounds similar in size.

Since the curves for Wilson and NRTL are quite similar thus both of them are used to compare
their efficiency of distillation column to separate ethylene oxide from water. Comparing both
of the models, it can be deduced that Wilson model showed the nearest value to experimental
data compared to NRTL. But one flaw is that through the calculation and simulation run by the
Aspen, we noticed that the results obtained implied that WILSON model cannot be used solely
because of the negative value show for the number of minimum stages which basically deviates
from the theoretical understanding of a distillation column.

These limitations and deviations of WILSON as well as UNIFAC from its theory guided us in
choosing NRTL as our activity coefficient model.

REFERNCES

1) E. Mudenza. (2013). From UNIQUAC to Modified UNIFAC Dortmund: A Discussion.

[Accessed 13th May 2019] (This one got a lot of limitations and weakness. Can take
more from here for unifac)
2) T. Raatikainen,. A. Laaksonen. (2015). Application Of Several Activity Coefficient
Models To Water-organicelectrolyte Aerosols Of Atmospheric Interest. Atmospheric
Chemistry and Physics Discussions, European Geosciences Union, 5 (3), pp.3641-
3699. ffhal-00301562f [Accessed 13th May 2019]