Fusel oil is a mixture obtained as a side cut during ethanol distillation, mainly composed of i-amyl alcohol, water, ethanol, isobutanol, and other alcohols. Currently, fusel separation into the constitutive alcohols is accomplished by batch or continuous distillation involving different columns in an energy-intensive process. Moreover, fusel oil presents a particular thermodynamic behavior projected in several azeotropes, making the purification of fusel oil a challenging process. In this work is proposed a novel distillation scheme to purify isoamyl alcohol from other fusel alcohols by using a dividing wall column scheme. In order to determine the benefits of using such intensified technology, a comparison with the conventional scheme was carried out. In order to accurately represent the thermodynamic equilibrium, data for phase equilibrium was needed to the correctly design of the purification process. Both, the traditional distillation scheme and the dividing wall column were modeled using Aspen Plus and optimized by using a hybrid stochastic algorithm. Results indicate that the dividing wall column is not only more efficient in term of energy intensity (2785 kJ/kg Amyl alcohol) against (3497 kJ/Kg Amyl alcohol) the conventional scheme, but also it offers large economic savings compared with the conventional scheme (27 % savings).

燃料油是在乙醇蒸馏过程中作为侧馏分获得的混合物，主要由异戊醇，水，乙醇，异丁醇和其他醇组成。目前，通过分批或连续蒸馏，在高能耗的过程中涉及不同的塔，将杂醇分离成组成型醇。此外，杂醇油表现出在几种共沸物中预测的特定热力学行为，这使得杂醇油的纯化成为具有挑战性的过程。在这项工作中，提出了一种新颖的蒸馏方案，可通过使用隔壁塔方案从其他杂醇中纯化异戊醇。为了确定使用这种强化技术的好处，进行了与常规方案的比较。为了准确表示热力学平衡，正确设计纯化过程需要相平衡数据。传统蒸馏方案和分隔壁塔均使用Aspen Plus进行建模，并使用混合随机算法进行优化。结果表明，隔壁塔不仅在能量强度（2785 kJ / kg戊醇）方面比常规方案更高效（3497 kJ / Kg戊醇），而且与常规方案相比，它可以节省大量经济费用（节省27％）。