Ether recovery

摘要

MTBE is recovered from an ether containing effluent by fractionation. When driers are not used on the hydrocarbon feed to MTBE manufacture, a separate water-methanol phase occurs in the fractionation overhead which is separately processed in a methanol fractionator and the water recovered is used to water wash the separated hydrocarbon phase from the overhead while methanol is recycled to MTBE and when driers are used on the hydrocarbon feed a separate methanol phase occurs in the fractionation overhead which can be recycled to MTBE manufacture and the hydrocarbon phase is directly passed to a drier preceding alkylation.