IMPROVED PURIFICATION AND RECOVERY OF ACETONITRILE

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an improved process for readily removing substantially all the acrylonitrile impurity present in a crude acetonitrile. SOLUTION: This process is to treat a crude acetonitrile containing acrylonitrile as an impurity and comprises a step for feeding the crude acetonitrile containing the acrylonitrile as the impurity and water to an upper part of a distillation column, a step for distilling the crude acetonitrile over a time sufficient to vaporize substantially all the acrylonitrile impurity in the presence of the water and remove the acetonitrile impurity into an overhead stream emerging from the distillation column and a step for recovering the crude acetonitrile without substantially containing the acrylonitrile impurity from the lower part of the distillation column.