Fusel oil is a valuable byproduct of the fuel ethanol industry that can be used to isolate C6 alcohols and other fragrances and flavor ingredients. In this work we propose two distillation schemes for obtaining isoamyl alcohol from fusel oil: a conventional distillation sequence and a dividing wall column. After validation of thermodynamic models to accurately describe phase equilibria of fusel components (VLE and LLE), a dividing wall column (DWC) separation scheme was developed. Both traditional sequential distillation and DWC system were optimized using differential evolution and tabu list coupled to ASPEN PLUS. Results indicate that significant energy and economic savings can be obtained in the purification of fusel oil (a non ideal mixture) using a DWC scheme compared to conventional configuration.
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