High purity cyclohexane from petroleum streams by extractive distillation

In view of the high cyclohexane content (1.81 wt‐%) of one of the Indian crude oils, a systematic study on the production of high purity cyclohexane from a suitable refinery stream was undertaken at the Indian Institute of Petroleum. Superfractionation of the refinery stream followed by extractive distillation of the resulting concentrate, with aniline as solvent, gave cyclohexane product of 99.0% purity in a continuous bench scale operation. The solvent free extract does not need any refractionation step for producing cyclohexane of the above purity.