Butadiene purification with simultaneous prefractionation and vinylacetylene rejection

摘要

A C4-hydrocarbon feedstream containing butenes, butadiene, and vinylacetylene is subjected to a first extractive distillation with a selective solvent to remove butenes and a first portion of vinylacetylene as the extract; by the extraction with a minor quantity of methylethyl ketone in the selective solvent in this step, it has been found that a major portion of the vinylacetylene can be rejected, together with the butenes in the rich extract and that simultaneously the quantity of butadiene extracted could be considerably reduced; in a second extractive distillation the butadiene-rich raffinate of the first extractive distillation is further purified by extractive distillation using a mixture of sulfolane and methylethyl ketone as the solvent; after solvent stripping, the butadiene stream is finally purified in a fractionation step, wherein further vinylacetylene is removed.