• shortcut method
• n-butane
• ethanol
• azeotropic mixture

The separation of homogenous azeotropic mixtures is a common task in the chemical industry. In the literature, pressure swing distillation is often mentioned as an alternative to the widely used azeotropic distillation and extractive distillation. However, until now very few experimental data concerning this process have been done. A lot of azeotropic mixtures show a shift in the azeotropic concentration as pressure changes. In pressure swing distillation this principle is used to separate homogenous azeotropic mixture in two columns that operated at two different pressure.
This work will discuss the design procedure for the design of pressure swing distillation separating an azeotropic mixture. A shortcut method for column design separating azeotropic mixtures is proposed in this work.