Dehydration of ethanol-water azeotropic mixture by adsorption through phillipsite packed-column

Phillipsite is a natural zeolite material available in several locations in Jordan. Phillipsite with and without treatment was used for dehydrating ethanol in the adsorptive distillation process. Molecular sieves 4A was taken as a reference material. According to the breakthrough curves phillipsite treated with 1 M calcium chloride solution gave the best performance. The water uptake using the 1 M-phillipsite was 0.1054 g H₂O/g adsorbent while the water uptake using the 4A molecular sieves was 0.1030 g H₂O/g adsorbent. The Guggenheim, Anderson, and De Boer (GAB) model and the Frenkel, Halsey, and Hill (FHH) model were used to represent the isotherms for water sorption on the adsorbents used. The GAB model fit the experimental data relatively better than the FHH model for all cases, except for the case of using 2 M-phillipsite. Using the Crank diffusion model the effective diffusivity of water vapor in raw phillipsite is 10.40 × 10^-8 mm²s^-1 while it is 6.9 × 10^-8 mm²s^-1 in the 1 M treated phillipsite.