Toward Sustainable Energy Management of Isopropyl Acetate/Isopropanol/Water Separation: From Traditional Extractive Distillation to Multiobjective Optimized and Thermally Integrated Reactive-Extractive Processes

The separation of the isopropyl acetate/isopropanol /water ternary azeotrope is a highly energy-intensive bottleneck in solvent recovery and poses significant challenges to industrial decarbonization. This study investigates a transition toward sustainable energy management by systematically assessing the progression from traditional extractive distillation to intensified reactive-extractive distillation (RED). A multiobjective genetic algorithm was used to optimize six distinct process configurations, with thermal integration considered as a key intensification strategy, targeting economic feasibility and carbon footprint reduction. A rigorous 4E (energy, exergy, economic, and environmental) analysis framework was applied to benchmark the thermodynamic performance, energy utilization efficiency, economic feasibility, and environmental impact of each configuration. The results show that the thermally integrated RED process is the most promising alternative, achieving reductions of 63.3% in energy consumption, 43.4% in total annual cost, and 67.6% in CO2 emissions compared with conventional benchmarks. Notably, combining chemical conversion with thermal integration increased the second-law efficiency to 45.8%, demonstrating the significant potential of process intensification for energy conservation. The study further examines the effects of different entrainers in the same RED process and the performance of the same entrainer under different process configurations. Overall, this work provides a scalable pathway toward energy-efficient separation and offers critical insights into advanced energy management for sustainable chemical engineering.