The separation of benzene and cyclohexane with furfural as entrainer was studied using conventional extractive distillation

extractive dividing wall column distillation and heat integrated pressure-swing extractive distillation. The three whole processes were simulated by commercial process simulator Aspen Plus V8.4. The sensitive analyses of all steady-state designs were carried out and the optimal flow sheets with minimum energy requirements have been established using the multi-objective genetic algorithm with constrains. Compared with the conventional configuration

the extractive dividing wall column distillation and heat integrated pressure-swing extractive distillation process with minimum heat duty of the reboiler presented the energy savings of 21.5% and 15.7%

respectively. The economic analysis was carried out to evaluate the economic feasibility of the three processes. The results clearly demonstrated that when compared with the conventional extractive distillation process

the total annual cost was reduced by 6.0% in the extractive dividing wall column and increased by 50.8% in the heat integrated pressure-swing extractive distillation

which provided a theory basis and design reference for the industrial design for extractive distillation process to separate azeotropic benzene and cyclohexane system.