Caustic Scrubber The Role of caustic scrubber in IPA plant manufacturing IPA by indirect hydration method is to neutralize the

two streams one of which contains diisipropyl ether (30 to 50 wt%) isopropyl alcohol (30 to 40 wt%) and propylene (10 to 20 wt%) and the other one which has vapour mixture of isopropyl alcohol, diisopropyl ether and minor amount of propylene and water using 10wt% NaOH.The operating temperature and pressure in scrubber are 373 K and 14.7psi respectively.The effluent from the scrubber consists of 55% IPA and transferred to crude isopropyl alcohol tank. From this tank, the mixture is send to the ether column C105 via stream 20 which is operated at a temperature of 362 K and a pressure of 14.7 psi. In this column distillation process will take place to separate diisopropyl ether and hexene. The overhead product, diisopropyl ether is withdrawn via stream 21 to the diisopropyl column C109. Then, it is washed to produce washed diisopropyl ether at 95 wt.%.