Simulation of the concentration process of citriodora (Cidrón) essential oil using falling – film molecular distillation model Lippia

Abstract

In the processes of production and purification of thermally unstable products, the design plays an important role since it determines the costs and quality of the obtained product. In this work, we present a mathematical model for a falling-film molecular distiller based on the equations of balance of heat, material and momentum for amulticomponent mixture, which is applied to the concentration of Lippia citrodora essential oil. The model consistedof coupled differential equations that were solved using the Crank-Nicholson method for obtaining the profiles of temperature and molar fractions of the components in the evaporation and condensation surfaces. The essential oil isobtained with concentrations from 47.79% to 89.21% of citral in the bottoms and 41.62% to 72.23% of limonene inthe top.