You are design a distillation process to separate benzene (1) from cyclohexane (2). The mixture

is initially at 15 mol. % benzene and the product requirements are to create a stream purified to

at least 98 mol. % benzene. You have access to two distillation columns. Each can be operated

between 50 and 1000 kPa. Each tower can have as many equilibriums stages as necessary to

perform the separation. Use the van Laar activity coefficient model (a = 0.125, B = 0.919) for

the non-ideal behavior in the mixture.

a. Provide an xy diagram for each distillation column, state what pressure the diagram

was generated at, and provide how many stages are in each column?

b. What are the azeotropic compositions for each distillation column? Describe your

strategy for the separation process.