Hallo and thank you in advance.

I am not an engineer, I am a chemist, and my knowledge of distillation processes is limited. In the plant I work we face a lot of problems with our methanol rectification process. We use a feed of Methanol 10% and water 90% at about 700 kg/h and our aim is to have a distilate (methanol) with concentration of water less than 1000 ppm and a bottom with about 95% of water.

Our column has 3 trays. We have satisfactory results with the feed at environment temperature but I think that the best results would occure by giving heat to our feed. Trying to feed our column at a temperture of about 64 C had dissapointing results as we could not control it. What is your opinion? If someone is interested in answering I can give more infotmstion.

Thank you again.